


Lotus

by thethrillof



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: (temporary tho), Body Horror, Bug Tank AU, Dehumanization, Gen, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Past Character Death, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, References to Illness, Self-Hatred, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, dream realm, thk is not okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: Frisk is given a weird bug, the ruins of Hallownest are enveloped in a new crisis, and fate is knocked from its path.
Relationships: Frisk & The Hollow Knight
Comments: 85
Kudos: 378





	1. Chapter 1

Do not think.

It fails. The situation is beyond anything it has encountered, has heard of, was warned of.

Do not speak.

It cannot. If it tried, it would choke on meticulous lifetime habit and Her infection. The last words it has heard, shaking its tiny body, meant nothing.

Do not feel.

It does. Terror. Confusion. Terror increasing, in that the confusion does not belong solely to it and that is horribly new.

Do not hope.

That is simple enough. It knows not what could be hoped for, here.

The Hollow Knight drips infection across the strange white cloth beneath it, legs curled stiffly to avoid pressing against the glass wall of its prison.

The holes eaten away in its chest, stomach, and arm are no longer agonizing. Another creature had taken care of that. Perhaps several. It had been moved between multiple hands. The details were lost in the haze of Her rage; all but the hands each being more than the length of its body. It had nearly fallen. It had tried to fall.

Do not feel, do not feel, _do not feel._

It is so tired.

She is not enraged. She is not screaming. She is waiting behind its eyes, panic stabbing through its body in a burning rhythm.

She directs its head without care. Face aimed to the side, it can see more than a white blur from above, a pink stripe along the floor outside. A creature, waiting across an abyss.

She unfurls its body. Her chanting direction of loathing and slaughter, unceasing for years, is now silent.

The distant creature lies still.

It recalls an impression of what must have been eyes, golden brown, staring into the clear cell intensely.

The creature is not watching now. Quiet. Sleeping.

Its body moves. It resists now that it has space to do so, leaving its single arm uselessly resting against the branch in the center of the cell.

…When had the other been lost?

Do not think. It gives Her purchase.

The stump that is left flares with a memory of its shape, and She grasps the branch, begins to drag its body upward. The Temple contained them both for too long. An echo of Her rage, newly building, blinds and deafens it back to submission. A chance for true freedom is here. She will succeed and it will break, again and again, as it has done before.

It is so tired.

It.

It wants.

It wants everything

to 

stop.

Do not hope.

When it can see through its own eyes once more, the giant creature is within arm’s reach.

* * *

Frisk wakes up with a tiny white face right in front of theirs.

It’s just luck that they don’t slam their head into the wall when they fling it back, away from something _way too close_ so suddenly.

They stare at each other across the length of their pillow, unmoving, as Frisk starts getting their bearings back. The stickbug, the one they got from the monsters on the side of one of the mountains. It got out. Somehow.

They ask how the heck it did that.

Which, of course, does nothing.

Carefully lifting their head and resting it on their hand, their eyes slide back to the jar on the windowsill. The napkin they’d secured with the rubber band had a hole ripped all the way through, as if their stickbug had jumped straight up and out. And maybe it did. It must’ve taken some pretty big jumps to get all the way from there to the desk to their bed, unless it climbed down and back up. A quick glance at the floor shows that Mom’s pie is there, though a bug-sized bite or several probably wouldn’t be something they can see.

The stickbug sways, twitches, pitches forward, so fast they barely notice. It’s tiny, so it doesn’t have far to fall, even if it did to the blanket, and it doesn’t. It rests face-first against the side of the pillow instead, almost like it’s still standing.

Do bugs breathe? They gotta, since Mom said not to close them in the jar. The stickbug is entirely still when they get in real close, holding their own breath to see if it’ll move. When it doesn’t, they gingerly nudge it into the palm of one hand, where it curls its one upper leg against itself. Arm, maybe. They don’t know too much bug stuff, except that bees don’t sting unless you’re mean first. And that it’s not actually a stickbug. Real ones actually look like sticks. This one looks like it’s made of black wires. Wirebug just sounds weird.

Toriel is the one who knows the bug stuff. They showed the stickbug off to her first, asked her to help it, ‘cause it was bleeding all over. They never actually asked what she thought it was. Didn’t have time.

She’s the one who got the jar and let them decorate it. And she’s the one who told them, very gently, that she didn’t think the stickbug would make it overnight. Her healing magic helped, but it’s not made for fixing bugs. “Bugs rarely live long lives, my child,” she said. “It will be pleased with whatever you give it.” They think she might’ve been lying, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

It looks like it started bleeding again after they fell asleep. The orangeness is dripping down its face, uncomfortably warm where it runs down the finger that its head’s propped to rest against. Mom healed that before, they’re almost absolutely sure.

They could put it back in the jar. Leave it. To maybe get better?

Or maybe not. Maybe leave it to die.

Alone.

Frisk’s fingers curl around the stickbug a little more. They’re still pretty sleepy. It’s nowhere near dawn, still sometime after Toriel went to bed. They shift and settle their back against the wall.

It’s just a bug, but it’s still alive now. Even if it won’t be for long. Even if it can’t see, or doesn’t know what’s happening. It might--after all, Muffet’s spiders were smarter than the ones that they’d met on the Surface before. Maybe they hadn’t been paying enough attention back then.

They sit up better, even though they’re sleepy, shifting their hands to let the stickbug stretch out over both their palms if it wants.

They’d never died alone, of course, but even the company of somebody (or somebodies) trying to kill them somehow seems like a less awful thought. That’s terrifying, though they can’t explain why, even to themselves. Any death sucks (though getting ate is probably the worst).

_Mommy! Daddy!_

No. They push those thoughts off. That wasn’t alone. He was, they weren’t, game over.

It was almost like dying alone, down in the Lab. Before they got to talk the the Amalgamates in the right way. It was just cold, dark, unsettling, voices dancing around their ears and coming from their own mouth, sometimes. It was terrible.

It was cold. The echoes of air and distant Amalgamates were awful, otherworldly music. Things are better. They're friends now. They still hear it, sometimes.

It was cold.

It’s cold.

_It’s so cold--_

Until it isn’t.

Sunlight scalds their face and circles wheel around their head and they press their hands over their eyes, snarling. Frisk was busy remembering!

Something is above them. It’d be blocking out the light if it had shadow but it is the light, so they get even angrier at it. Her. HER. HER, SHE, **THE RADIANCE** brands into their brain.

They snap at the Radiance to get away from them.

“Little creature,” she roars/sings/hums/laughs. “Greater beasts have tried to order me away.”

The light ripples underwater. There’s no water. Her words pump toxin through their skin.

They move their head, cracking their eyes open. The world’s clouds and light and just a bit of stone under their back. They’re lying down. They shouldn’t be.

“Little creature. I wonder your purpose.” She does not. Certainty of a goddess that knows all, unshaken as earth scorched to nothing.

(The thought of a lie does not come to them. Fortunately, this doesn’t matter.)

Moving is painful. The sun beats down on them in waves, hot as fire, sharp as spears, and they have had enough of that.

They are not alone.

“Little creature.” She reminds them of meeting Papyrus, but that’s an insult to him. Overwhelming, alarming. Nothing to hide behind here. Undyne, bellows of justice, cutting through. Asgore, the whispers and rumors, the coffins, the warmth.

None of their sadness. None of the pain. Liar, liar, liar. They want their dagger.

“I am here. Listening. Speak. Stand. Allow me closer.” Burnt sugar sweet. A warm last breath. Love broken, love lost. 

The heat presses down harder.

They remember climbing a mountain. They remember finding a home.

Hissing words that Toriel would ground them a month for, grasping without sight, knowing what they want is right there, right next to them on the stone. A head that’s not a head, a shell, a mask, a face, a little white face with orange eyes that they blindly claw at, spilling the nasty goop to leave the space behind. It’s not a little face, it’s a mask longer than either of their arms, and after they’re done it’s held defiantly against their chest.

She screeches.

They screech back.

“You reach for that empty _thing!”_ Her words vibrate through their bones. “That lie! That wyrm-born abomination! You know nothing! Not where it comes from, not the shattering of my light! You will release it. You, creature, fragile, pathetic, little CREATURE. Listen! LISTEN. Do not turn your back. Nothing again. LITTLE CREATURE. COME HERE. YOU WILL RELEASE ME. YOU WILL KILL IT. YOU WILL END WHAT REMAINS OF HIM.”

The mask they hold is so, so, so cold, it bites into their skin worse with the orange burning.

A child braces for pain.

A child grits teeth.

Fought a God made of every SOUL of every monster they ever met, built of l-o-v-e, full of LOVE, stars and colors screaming and whirling and ripping them to bits. They died and died and died and refused. Hopes and Dreams and Determination, all swirling and ripping gracelessly out of their chest.

They tell her: no!

They tell her: My name’s Frisk!

They tell her: I don’t care!

They tell her: This stickbug is MINE! They’re **_mine!_** Not yours!

They are a Fallen Child even if not _The_ Fallen Child, and they lost their fear the first time they tripped into fire, were consumed and shattered by it, and they prove this by twisting, sliding, leaping off the stone to plummet into the dark under her horrible terrible beautiful screaming--

They land with a jolt in their bed, foggy gray light filtering in through the window.

Blinking afterimages of gold circles from their eyes, they adjust their neck and look at the stickbug still in their fingers. _Their_ stickbug, they think with a shadow of anger that’s already fading with wakefulness.

Their stickbug sits up, staring at them with deep black eyes.

Frisk gives it a tired grin.

Look, they whisper. Survived the night after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Frisk bursts into the kitchen behind her. “My child!” Toriel turns in surprise. “Why, good morning! It is quite early,” she observes, glancing at the clock. A full hour earlier than they tend to rise. She has not yet begun setting up breakfast.

They shove their hands towards her face, telling her to look, look, look. Their stickbug! It’s not dead!

“Indeed, it is not!” She chuckles at the little face peering out between their fingers. A child will always learn loss; that it is put off a little longer is a relief even so.

Frisk implores her to let it stay at the table. She gives in at the look on their face, and the little bug is allowed a tiny teacup to settle in (at Frisk’s request) boxed in by a few other glasses and towels at the other side of the table (Toriel’s gentle and firm insistence). It likely cannot scramble across the table with three limbs. “It is better to be safe than sorry,” she says. It would not do if it fell to the floor, or got into the rest of the food.

She cooks bacon and eggs with a mix of her own fire magic and the stove. While fire magic is her preference, human meals are best cooked with the more standard sort, and Frisk needs more than monster food to grow properly.

When the meal is ready and they both settle in, Frisk drops a tiny bit of egg on the teacup’s edge. It falls in. Toriel chuckles at the stubborn expression upon Frisk’s face as they pluck the food up again, trying to place it again. And again. The insect does not seem interested.

Toriel glances toward the window, finding the sky outside rather dreary. The television said something about a rainstorm the day before. She has few errands to go on today, at least, and Frisk will enjoy splashing in the puddles.

“You must eat your food before it goes cold,” she tells them after many failed egg-balancing attempts. “I am certain your insect friend will not care.”

They are visibly dissatisfied, but dig into their meal. It is rare they are so enamored with something that they put off eating!

Between bites, they bring up its miraculous recovery, and tell her about its surprise escape. (She is grateful it had not made it out before she settled down for the night; the last thing she would have liked to do was to step on Frisk’s new pet.)

With equal intensity, they scoot forward and interrogate her on what she thinks it must be.

She humors them and leans over, eyeing it. It most certainly does not look like any insect or bug she has seen; this does not necessarily mean much, as the climate shift above the mountain has changed much of what lives around there. Little life outside of plant matter stayed to fall, ancient magic lingering and repelling much.

Their insect is much too long to be a beetle, and lacking a shell. It seems to have the remains of wings, tattered and cut off not far beyond where its thorax should have begun. Perhaps some sort of shell cover had been damaged in whatever incident had robbed it of its legs?

In truth, though she knows more than some, she is far more skilled in the identification of snails.

“Hmm. Well, Frisk, this is a rather unusual specimen. I cannot say what it is. However,” she adds before they can deflate, “we can take a quick trip to the library while we are out. I have no doubt there will be plenty of resources to help!”

She has wanted to stop by there lately anyhow; this is just a helpful opportunity for them both, rather than only her. Frisk rarely has enthusiasm for stopping to read unless she is the one reading it. 

Hopefully, this will be an encouraging first step to no longer viewing _study and learning_ as a torment.

After breakfast concludes, Frisk leaves to put their pet away. They return immediately, sheepishly holding the jar and the napkin that had been torn in one hand, insect in the other. They could replace it with the one they put on the bottom, but that might rip too, right?

Though it is not ideal, Toriel finds the lid, poking holes in the top with a single claw. “Here we are. This should do for now,” she says, watching them scamper back.

Their bug ate the egg bit, Frisk tells her smugly when they return. They just had to push it _at_ their mouth and it worked.

“I see,” she says mildly, hoping they had been gentle with it. “Are you ready to go?”

Frisk hops forward. Already? Yes!

* * *

Elsewhere, Hornet stalks the tunnels that, in a better world, could have been her home.

Flight can be the most practical way to deal with a threat. When the threat is a world-shaking explosion, this is more true than against an illness-maddened bug of any size.

Hallownest is wracked with tremors even now. Whatever had torn the ground asunder utterly ruined anything around the Crystal Peak and beneath. Half of the City of Tears and beyond is drowning with a deluge unlike anything this land has ever seen.

The many Infected Husks, for once, mostly fail to get in her way. The orange Light in their eyes still gleams, yet their bodies and violent reactions are slowed, stuttering. If necessary, a single blow strikes them down.

The little ghost hasn’t been seen since it began. She can only hope they are only blocked from the more conventional paths, not buried beneath rubble. Hallownest is a place full of inglorious ends; the newly-marked King, empty as the title is compared to what once was, needs not to add to that tally.

She knows Deepnest as well as Hallownest, though she has lurked within it less. This place has escaped some of the madness above, and she must take time to regroup.

Beyond the distant rumbling and the near-imperceptible sound of her own movement, it is quiet. Quieter than Deepnest should be, has ever been.

Prickling instincts slow her. Though she hears nothing...there is most definitely something, waiting in the darkness ahead, blocking the slight airflow that travels through the earth even this deep.

Hornet braces, readying her Needle.

She does not drop it, though her fingers spasm at the voice that emanates from the shadows.

“Daughter.”

Herrah. The Beast.

 _“Mother,”_ she says numbly. 

Her priorities reshuffle. 

This is it, then. So late in it all, and yet it's now that the Infection has finally claimed her.

She knows not what stands before her, her mother’s body imprinted across it. She knows the madness that claims the minds before the bodies of the living. She knows her own fantasies, discarded long ago with the full fall of Hallownest.

In a blur, Hornet lays her traps.

“I know not what you desire, but do not step closer,” she warns steadily. If this is a Husk, it will ignore her and stumble into her traps. If it is a rare innocent soul that somehow wandered into the depths--as unlikely as it is--and not a fool, it should turn away. If it challenges her, then so it will.

The shadow shifts. “This is not the greeting I had imagined, though I am hardly disappointed,” Herrah’s voice says. Hornet adjusts the angle of her Needle, slipping back, readying.

Even in Hallownest’s stasis, the memories of Herrah’s voice had faded in time. The Infection’s facsimile leaves little to be desired but the edge of a rasp. _A voice disused,_ an excuse whispers.

 _“Stay back,”_ Hornet orders, louder. They are not near Herrah’s place of Dreaming. Her words echo in the tunnel’s close quarters.

“Wise, my daughter.”

She does not want to be here.

Herrah’s form comes closer, examining her thread, her traps’ edges.

The tunnel is too small. Hornet can’t attack without striking her own traps. Not wise at all. She is a wrong-footed fool, locked in a waiting game.

“I can wait forever,” she says coldly. She does not want to outlast this. The urge to howl at the form of her mother to _leave_ is swallowed down. Ambushes are normal for her. Waiting is a skill she does not lack. Though this is a personal matter, she’s dealt with so much worse, surely. 

Another tremor shivers the world, and all goes silent between apparition and protector.

“Daughter...” Herrah’s voice, finally, wavers. Memory did not let escape how very tall she was in waking life, the tips of her hidden horns nearly touching the ceiling. “Though I recognize you well, I’m afraid I must ask. What is your name?”

And Hornet’s world comes crashing down.

She wished--rarely, so rarely, she thought about what could have been. Truly the daughter of Herrah the Beast, holding more than the faintest of memories. When she was young, before the Fall, living within the Den with her mother guiding her hand and Needle.

In every fantasy, and that which separates this from false wishes, her mother knew what she could never: the name taken and bestowed by the Hive’s ruler.

A greater silence. Better. Worse.

Her hands are shaking.

“Herrah. You cannot be here.”

Herrah is weaponless. Still, she pulls a loop of silk of her own skill, catching it around the nearest blade, tightening it, shattering it. 

"You do not flee. I must admit..."

Again.

"...I am grateful."

Again.

Until there is nothing between them but the point of a Needle.

“You _cannot_ be here. You should never have been able to wake,” Hornet says from her mother’s shadow, gaze locked on the edge of the Dreamer’s robe.

She’s gone mad. She is making the most foolish decision of her life. She is going to die a horrible death, and her Needle is sinking down to rest at her side even so.

Herrah’s hand slips beneath her chin, angling Hornet’s stare to meet her own. “The Dream has been shattered. We know not how. But I am here, my daughter. Despite the best-laid plans, I am here.”


	3. Chapter 3

The strange meal it had been given sits heavily. Its body is unused to fullness outside of disgusting gobs of Her orange.

It stands where it was placed, resting its back against the branch.

The glass reflects its damaged form, distorting it further.

The cell is akin to a lumafly lantern.

Lumaflies have a purpose. It does not know its purpose, here. It cannot emit light any more than it succeeded in containing it.

Now, She is elsewhere. Free.

Its head settles back against bark.

The top of its cell is different now. Metal. It likely cannot push its way out if it tried.

It does not. It has no orders and a broken purpose.

The Vessel is worse than useless.

But it will try again.

It must.

Do not think.

It fails.

It is failing more than it has in so very long, without agony or screaming or words meant to twist the mind it should not have further apart.

At any time, She could return. She could sing her terrible song of blazing Light and breaking dawn and take it back.

It should be taken back. It must be taken back. Hallownest is nearly dead. If it can regain its purpose--if it can heal itself, empty itself--

She should stay away. It could lead Her back. It could destroy its purpose even more terribly than it already has.

Do not think.

Do not.

Do not.

It _will_ be empty again. If She returns. If She attacks. If--

Something empty cannot be miserable.

Water strikes against the giant window beyond its containing glass. After some time, it stops. And starts once more.

Do not.

It can think. It should not, it tried not. When it failed, the Radiance did not allow it such freedom. Kill, die, the Light will rise once more and drown out the ugly Void and pathetic Paleness.

Do not.

How long had it struggled against Her?

How long had it been contained? Failed to contain?

Do not think.

_Vessel. Though bound, you shall know the state of the world._

Do not think.

It knows many were caught in Her infection. It sensed as parts of Hallownest collapsed. It felt that no more came to linger outside the Temple.

Do not think.

It has not been this alone for so long. She, stretching back forever. Before, Father, pale light watching over. The Great Knights and their tremendous power, working to make it stronger.

And yet it broke.

Do not. Do not do not do not do not

Its mantra is weaker than ever before. It grounded it, steadied it, reminded it of its purpose, and it is failing.

When are the great creatures coming back? Are they? When is it--

Stop. Do not.

Do not think.

Do not _hope._

Do.

Not.

It tells itself do not until the words are nothing. It tells itself until time is nothing but the beats of do-not-do-not-do-not and that is all.

It feels empty.

No. It is empty.

No--

Do-not- _do-not-do-not._

♥

Light changes. Shadows deepen.

The creatures come back.

It betrays itself by (lessening fear, _relief)_ turning its head to look.

It is ushered out, onto the wooden surface. It is contained within fingers once more, bearing witness to the change the great creatures decree.

The cell is removed and replaced with one far larger.

Rectangular, not circular. The top is a translucent green. The floor is covered with softer soil instead of the strange cloth. The branch is returned, planted in the dirt, with another greater one resting on its side. There is enough space for even the Vessel to fit into. A rectangle pushed down in a corner, filled with water.

What great power these beings hold, lifting items the size of rooms and buildings with no effort at all.

After setting it back inside to rest gently on the dirt, the creature that brushed Her away with rage and ease makes marks on the outer walls of the glass. Swirls, lines, far beyond the single pink stripe of the last.

There is a shape, repeating. Two curves on the top, tapering down to a single point on the bottom.

A symbol. One the great creature carries in shining gold around its neck.

Vessels are not to be unsettled. It forces itself not to be.

Father--

The Pale King no longer has need of a Vessel. It does not matter what higher being claims it now.

♥

The creature holds a binding of pictures to the edge of its prison, strange voice shaking the walls.

Some are long and black. Some have dark bodies and white faces. Some are simply shaped oddly with unusual points.

All are nearly familiar.

It tries not to understand.

The creature is asking, is this you? Are you this?

Empty things should not be asked questions.

Empty things cannot answer them.

Is this you? _Is this you?_

Do not think.

♥

When one of the great creatures comes nearby, it stills itself, standing poised as can be. A familiarity that is, despite itself and self-disgust, partially comforting. It stood before the Pale King, the Dreamers, the the King’s retainers and the one that sharpened its Nail.

That Nail is gone.

The great creatures do not notice its minute trembles. It does not know _why_ it trembles.

It casts the thought aside. A Vessel knows what it is told and nothing more.

The smaller creature removes it from its cell, returns it, takes it out again. Undecided.

The Vessel wants--

It waits.

The great creature sits upon the shape where it sleeps, holding the failed Vessel in its palm.

Another strange meal is pressed beneath its mask. Something purple and sweet. It goes down more easily than the first, now that it knows what to do.

It does not strike at the fingertip that runs along the edge of its mask, brushing its ruined cloak. It refuses to flinch when the soft brown that covers the great being catches on the warped carapace left where its arm once was.

It does not know if it is found wanting, or if it is not. What does such a creature need a Vessel for? What would it want a bug for, if its identity is mistaken?

It should not--

It is not its place to question. Anything.

The great creature continues to stroke its mask until the taller one’s voice sounds, somewhere far away, and it is set back.

It tells itself the warmth does not matter. It tells itself it is likely wanting, and perhaps it will be discarded.

Do not hope.

It finds itself trembling again.

♥

Time flickers by in a way it has never known.

The world outside the massive dwelling fades to dark. The smaller of the giant creatures stops pacing and peering at it at the other’s arrival.

It watches something worn and familiar to the participants. A routine.

Across the room, the white one settles the smaller one onto the soft platform. It speaks, and the smaller one listens, sometimes speaking a few words to be hushed.

The White Palace was never to be loud. Any sound would bounce down the halls, any raised voice would be as terrible as breaking law. This Palace may have similar rules.

It spies another group of bindings, small, hidden in large white fingers. It cannot see details of the pictures, but these do not seem to be of bugs.

It is only then, and watching the white one brush the brown fur from around the smaller’s eyes, does it realize it cannot see well at all.

Under its fingers, it feels the crack in its mask is shallower than it should be. The hole of its eye is still an opening. There are no more irregularities, yet there is barely a shadow where it should see its fingers clearly.

It should not matter. No more than a lost arm. No more than a lost kingdom.

It had not even noticed.

The white one begins to speak oddly.

No. Not speaking at all.

Hums.

It should not know what a lullaby is. It should not care what a lullaby is. 

Do not hope. 

The creatures do not notice the Vessel staggering away from where it had last been placed.

Nothing is watching as it collapses inside the log, grief and guilt warping, smothering, stabbing through its chest.


	4. Chapter 4

The City of Tears is impossible to see.

The Knight stands balanced on a ledge above the border, where the endless expanse of the waterfall splits into mist and streams. Under their stare, bodies of the Infected flow by, still clutching their weapons or their Geo, tumbling and bumping along with pieces of broken architecture.

They don’t like it.

The Crystal Heart lets them shoot through the water, though eventually the water’s weight shoves them down, leaving them hopping through the streams to Claw at some edge and launch forward, until it happens again. While the entire thing is hardly the most frustrating trouble they’ve dealt with, it’s still far slower than they wanted.

They barely recognize where Lemm’s made his antique shop. They shove their way in, wanting to make sure he wasn’t visiting the Hollow Knight’s fountain when the top of the world decided to cave in.

He’s there, tapping on the edge of the counter. His head swings around from staring out the window to staring at them, apparently too surprised to see them to react until they wander past him.

“Only you’d be out in this ‘weather’, hm.” They stare out of the glass. There’s nothing to see here either, surrounding buildings hidden in blue-black shadows. “I supposed it’d be poor form to kick you out, but your stay would be more tolerable if you have something to sell.”

The Knight stares a little more. They aren’t certain what they’re expecting to see. The water is a distant, dull roar. For a while, that's all there is.

They produce a single King’s Idol. Geo is exchanged. It’s something in the range of normal.

The Knight’s gotten too used to this. Getting attached is dangerous. Anything can happen, and Hallownest is a deep mess of ‘anything’ that can end in a miserable death to people who don’t deserve it.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter much. They can’t show him their concern, and they doubt he'd want it from them even if they could.

“Hurry up and pick up what's left, will you? Can you _imagine_ what else is being lost in this nonsense?” he demands at their back on the way out, and they don’t pause to give any sort of answer.

♥

It’s not entirely intentional, finding their way into the Watcher’s Spire. It’s close, it’s big, and it’s probably withstanding the water more than the rest of the buildings they’d caught the creaking of even as they flew by. There don’t seem to be any Watcher Knights or sentries left to hunt them, same as the rest of the City’s Infected.

The mask of the Dreamer at the top stares out of their map when they open it. They can take a look through his telescope. It's a goal to focus on and help them get their bearings. It might help or it might not. 

Maybe not, the Knight decides once they make it up there, finding that same Dreamer’s mask staring back at them. Now, with much more of a person behind it.

“The Vessel who returned to this Kingdom,” says Lurien. His voice is soft, and neutral, and they find they don’t like that much either. “It drags us from our sacred sleep. Or perhaps another?”

They, predictably, do not answer.

The candles jitter. They can’t get a glimpse of his body beneath his cloak.

“Another failure for us to offer our King,” he says. Their hidden hands twitch, the Nail on their back a solid weight, and the moment passes when they realize he speaks of himself. “The Seal lost, the Dreamers woken. What has happened?” He is not asking them, which is offensive still, but not unusual. They do not need their Nail for this.

Lurien drifts. After a moment, they follow.

He had the same idea. He also has the same failure they half-prepared for, peering through the telescope, spying nothing but water. “Another calamity appearing in the wake of a different disaster. Or stacking atop it. The Hollow Knight…”

They listen intently at his side.

“…is farther away than it has ever been, through the Void and Old Light filtering it. I can feel…another Dreamer has woken. The City is drowning. Despite the ruined spell, the King must be consulted.”

The little Knight often wishes they had a voice, particularly to scoff with. They don’t like much of what they’ve found of this Pale King, either.

Still staring fruitlessly through the telescope, he keeps his back to them for a time, which only shows how out of touch he is with the waking world. Threats could be anywhere. _They_ are a threat.

…Perhaps their reluctance to rush in and kill the Dreamers has been misread as weakness. Lack of ability, or that disgustingly coveted _lack of will._

Lurien gives them a short look when they don’t leave. “Little shadow, I have woken already. There is no need for you.”

Expected. Yet somehow worse than when others do it. They gather themselves and their Dream Nail when he says nothing more--

A Cowardly Husk totters in, looks around, and then heads directly towards them. Amazing it had survived here when the rest hadn’t. They switch to hopping forward, readying a slash instead.

“Wait!” Lurien’s hand flies up. It actually is black, much like other bugs’. Unarmed, like the foolish ones. “Do not attack! He’s--he is harmless.”

The Husk’s eyes are clearly orange. They stay their Nail anyway. They can take one tackle if he goes against them, and the Cowardly ones gained their name through fleeing anyway.

There’s a tray of something in the Husk’s hands. He holds it out, directly in front of their face. It’s covered in something that may have been food, once.

“No--no, thank you, they do not need it. We. We do not.” Finally, Lurien is losing his composure. “I…I’m afraid my guest and I have business to attend to.”

The Husk seems to accept this, withdrawing to the edge of the room. Despite being a different color and shape than the rest of the Spire's scenery, they find their gaze slipping over him as if he was only another part of it.

“The Infection is weakening,” Lurien says, voice dropping to a whisper. The butler’s orange eyes are trained at the floor. “But it has yet to leave. This…this half-state, it should not be.”

The Knight waits, somewhat patiently, for a statement that isn’t absolutely obvious.

“The outside will be…difficult to traverse, to discover what else is happening.” Still obvious, but getting somewhere. “Surely the entire kingdom isn’t flooded. Herrah…”

Herrah. Deepnest.

Lurien turns. “Vessel. You have been well-traveled, we know.” We? The Dreamers? “Monomon has yet to wake. Perhaps something in the Archives can help. Perhaps that moth-made tool of yours can reach her. She alone holds more knowledge than even I, and her Archives hold all that any mind of Hallownest discovered.”

There’s not much more to say. After, Lurien doesn’t seem inclined to speak.

When he turns to look out again, the Dream Nail is softly scoffed at. _"Now is not the time to ply my thoughts, Vessel. There is something to be done."_

They aren’t sure what she or the Archives might have that can really help this.

The knight waits, staying just long enough to make Lurien uncomfortable, and for the butler to offer more rotten food. They almost want to take some…though, peering at the portions, they suspect it wouldn’t be enough for Jiji, even if she turned out to like it.

Once outside, they go along with their own plan, heading further into the deluge. They owe nothing to this Dreamer, and they have their own methods of discovering problems and their solutions.

Unfortunately, after far more work and several attempts, their plan is stymied by a massive pile of broken stone on the other side of the City blocking the paths.

After several powerful Nail strikes and Soul attacks prove to be insufficient, the little Knight barely pauses before returning the other way.

Alright. The Archives, maybe. They might stumble over others on the way there.

* * *

This time, the sky's blue.

Frisk carefully edges their way forward through the mist. What started as another awful and common True Lab dream shifted gradually to something new. It’s less scary, definitely.

Still. They don't trust it.

Stone under their feet. Again? It’s real ground, not somewhere in the sky.

Nothing shows itself. They start to walk, since there’s nothing better to do.

They’re looking for something. Somebody. They don’t know who, but they’re sure, with the certainty of somebody dreaming, having information drop into their head and that being the absolute reality of things. Looking for somebody important.

They’re not in the sky, and it’s not really ground they’re on. They’re in a building, a dome, and they’re walking by pointy graves in a shrine.

Their eyes slide by the words on them all, so they don’t stay to look. There’s a door, they reach it, they step through, and they nearly walk face-first into somebody who looks like a monster but’s actually a moth. They don’t know how they know that, since they can barely even see at the shape, glowing way too bright. It’s not as painful against _all of them_ in the overwhelming nasty way of the Radiance, so after a few seconds of suspicious staring, Frisk ambles around them, from their back to what’s probably their face.

“The words of the believers have gone quiet,” the moth says without any prompting. “The utterings of another world are there no longer. You, who pry into the deepest of dreams…you have come from that other world.”

Other world. Frisk’s lips move, and they resist the urge to insist they’re not an alien. That’s probably not what it really means, even though that’d be a little funny. They don’t properly reply, just making a noise with a question mark on the end of it, and the moth continues.

“The gates between realms have crashed open, letting impossible things in, allowing resting things out. I thought I could understand the meaning of their strange words, if only for a moment.” A pause, where Frisk can hear their own breathing. “I do hope they return soon. Else who will I have to listen to?”

Frisk, without word, without thought, reaches up to pat the moth’s scruff. The moth startles, and then another hand reaches back, patting their hair in return.

In the way of dreams, there is nothing else to say. They have no words to reassure, and they have somewhere to go. After a moment of basking in each others’ gentle warmth, Frisk turns and keeps on going.

Shining like a beacon, their SOUL stains the nearest mist red.

They’re sleeping. They’re dreaming. They don’t think they should know that.

The world opens wide, cracked stone ground going off as far as they can see. Which isn’t actually super far, since there’s fog. Still, there’s definitely not any buildings or walls or drop-offs, though there’s at least some little bits of grass sticking out of places. Most blades are almost to their waist, and they entertain themselves once or twice by grabbing one as they pass by, letting it spring back and grinning at its wild wiggling back into position.

Somewhere ahead, Frisk sees another soft glow. Greenish, not at all burning.

They alter their path a little bit to head in its direction. No destination means they can’t get lost, and they usually don’t care much about being lost anyway. Whoever they're looking for isn't going to be anywhere obvious.

The sky above is blue, the ground is flat, they’re going deeper into something. The fog’s a weight. It’s not hard to breathe, but they make sure to take deeper breaths anyway, feeling it swirl through their lungs. The scenery looks real cold and it _feels_ like the tropics, sticking strands of hair against their neck.

Without any wind, the fog parts. Frisk watches a jellyfish lady with white tangles wrapped around her tentacle stinger things float above the ground, staring at the sky.

They don’t realize they stopped to stare until she starts going forward, heedless of their presence. _“What was done for sake of protection, has instead…”_ Her voice slips away as she does, and Frisk hurries to catch up.

She’s not who they’re looking for, but they can’t stop themselves. Maybe she’ll have a clue! Or maybe she’ll just be somebody nice to talk to before they get back to their important searching.

More glowing white tangles start showing up on the ground instead of the tall grass. They guess it's spiderweb, but it's not. It’s more like drawings and letters, even though Frisk definitely can’t read whatever they’re saying.

They fling their arm up and call out for her to stop. Much to their own surprise, she does, whirling so fast it makes her tentacles wiggle in a funny way like the grass does. Frisk can’t stop a snicker.

“Was it you?” They don’t move as she gets close. Super close. Super duper close, leaning her white face--her _mask_ close enough to almost touch theirs. “Odd being, walking this plane. Was it you who broke the Seal?”

Frisk, crossing their eyes to try to look at just one of hers, shrugs. If they broke anything, it wasn’t on purpose.

“No…? Well.” A full-body sigh. She moves like real jelly, and Frisk breathes a laugh in her face, which has her finally straightening up out of their space. “Something has. My fellow Dreamers have woken. Do you know of them?” she asks when Frisk’s face spasms.

Dreemurrs? They stop grinning, asking stuff to see if she's talking about _their_ Dreemurrs.

“…No, I fear not. No monsters, and only one was ever royalty. True Dreamers, ones who slept, bound within this spell.” She can’t gesture, but they know she’s talking about the pale tangles. “My own protective spell has countered the Waking, and I am still trapped here. The Seal had to be broken, and now it has. And perhaps it will turn out my resting is not yet a terrible consequence. After all, it seems there is something left to discover. Tell me, now, who and what are you?”

They try to say their name, but their throat is suddenly shut tight. They try to fling their hands up, but their hands are stuck at their sides. They try to--

Under the covers they’ve somehow wrapped themselves in like a stupid cocoon, they wake up, barely able to breathe with their face shoved against their pillow.

When they struggle and sit up to stretch and suck in air, they think they spy something for just a split second.

Gossamer strands of that pale tangle, reaching right into their chest.

Right into their SOUL.


	5. Chapter 5

To the Vessel, Hallownest was a mystery.

It knew the White Palace. It knew, distantly, the Abyss. It had known the path from the Palace to the Egg, once. The torment of the Radiance had erased all memory of it.

It had learned some in the Egg, where the Pale King had left it a way to sense the World, where She had bled senses of the other Infected into its mind. Agony and shapes, terror and color, control and paths walked.

All in all, it was little.

The Vessel needed orders, not information. Not sights. Not to be seen by more than the King’s closest.

The great creature knew none of this, and gives it more.

Outside the not-glass of its cell (it is slightly too soft under the Vessel’s hand to be such), outside the window, there are flowers ten times the height of any that once grew within the Palace, a sky that changes from blue to grey to black speckled with light, horrible oranges and acceptable pinks and yellows in between.

The room itself is quickly imprinted upon. Memorization of where things are is not much evidence of mind.

The soft shape the creature sleeps upon. A flat wooden surface its cell is sometimes left on instead, surrounded by something the creature writes with. A massive compartment with doors that holds the garments they wear. A tall light source, glowing soft and yellow.

The Vessel is carried throughout the great dwelling in their hands. It tries to focus on nothing, or at least the fingers around it. There are more plants, many taller than the creature that keeps it. Once, they set it on a fuzzy brown thing that hangs above their head, looking delighted when it keeps its balance for a few seconds.

More light sources. More tables. A great square of something that shows images that move and strange sounds come from. Images on the walls that flash by, containing both creatures and many more it has no chance-- _no need--_ to properly see.

For it, this is a massive place. For the creatures, it appears nearly small for their size.

Do not think.

And yet--

There are no others. There is the small one that it belongs to, and the white one with strange small horns. The dwelling is solely their own.

Do not think, do not think, comparisons spring up in their rebellious thoughts no matter how badly they try to stop it.

The small one, a King? The taller one, a Queen?

No. The taller one has more power here, though the smaller is sometimes disinclined to pay attention. The tall white one has power over flame--which is not orange, and so it forcibly discards concern--that the small one appears to lack.

They wear clothing. One of the small things they gathered, though with little experience of outside, is that most bugs didn’t bother with it. The denizens of the White Palace wore some. The Beasts of Deepnest wore more. The Dreamers were cloaked in ceremony. Nothing else. This further points to some sort of importance.

When it is lifted by the larger, white hands, it finds itself standing among great strands of fur. Fur was a rare commodity in Hallownest. The Great Knight Ogrim had some. It had never had reason to touch that with bare hands.

The white creature’s fur is soft. It takes great resistance not to sink down within it.

Vessels do not need comfort. If they did--

If it did--

Do not think, _do not think._

\--it does not deserve it.

♥

It is quick to grasp orders. Tapping on the not-glass is a call for it to stand in that place. A curved hand is to be stood upon. A finger running up its back is to be still.

That last order is rarely necessary.

After being carried about the dwelling, it is taken outside. _Within_ its cell, at the stern call of the tall one.

There are buildings much like the one they came out of, differently colored, differently shaped. Many other creatures, all far more different than each home.

And its holder makes a beeline to each one, just to show it.

It clings desperately to orders, new and old and unspoken. Stand here. Stay poised. Do not meet others’ eyes.

There are many.

Beings with jutting muzzles. Beings with more eyes than a spider. Beings taller than the tall white one, and beings nearly the same scale as the Vessel.

All stare at it. All break into discussion. About it, about its holder, about what?

It does not matter. And the Vessel, after, remembers nearly none of those encounters.

It should not care. It does not care. _Do not care._

It cannot recall being seen by so many in its existence.

It is shown to a pair of white, furless things with eyes like another Vessel’s. Inexplicably, the creature takes it out, places it atop the shorter one’s head, running a finger up its back. _Stay still._ It manages, though it is trembling by the time it is retrieved, and not only by movement of the three laughing.

It is shown to one that looks like the tall white one, but with golden fur and horns that remind itself of others it had seen, long ago. That encounter is the longest, and its cell is given a bundle of small pink flowers to lie against the log.

It is shown to something yellow, with spikes--

Orange.

It freezes. It is unarmed. It is locked away.

It is helpless. Again.

Please--

Begging does nothing. It never did.

It staggers back. Echoes of agony tear through its body.

It cannot. It isn’t empty. It is terrified. Cowardly, pathetic, useless.

It’s sorry. It’s so sorry. Please. Please.

_Tap, tap, tap._

Order: come here. Stand here.

It is frozen. Legs locked. Halfway behind the log, not even hidden. It cannot move.

_Tap, tap, tap._

The creature with Her color on its head and clothes has no arms. In noticing, its own lost limb prickles with heat.

It isn't Her. It is not. It knows, it sees, it knows, it _knows._

It still cannot move.

There is change. An impression of movement. The orange-and-yellow one following, both walking.

This is the incorrect order of things.

The Vessel goes blank. It is outside, and then it is inside again.

It is tired. It wants Father. It does not deserve Father. It deserves _nothing._

The creature sits at the table.

A curved hand is held out. The Vessel finally moves, slipping out onto their palm.

It waits for judgement, head bowed. Surely, now they understand it is useless. A tool that cannot even follow the simplest orders.

The creature lifts it to their eyes. Touches its horns. Tilts it back. Murmurs something, soft even to it.

The white one is called over. One massive finger brushes over its horns, too, at the creature’s pleading.

There is warmth. Not terrible. Not burning. Comforting. Soft. Gentle.

Its eye fills with a flare of green. When it rears back, away, it is caught from falling.

It feels…better. Still shaky. Still pathetically frightened.

But there is something different. Something has shifted.

Vessels cannot weep. They should not, need not.

It should not want.

Something fills it alongside guilt.

It does. It _does._

It wants. It wants so badly. It doesn’t even understand, fully, what it wants.

When the sky darkens, long after its return to the cell, the creature reaches in to take the flowers.

The stems are woven together. A few petals fall, and they work more slowly. Watching the careful movement fills it with another touch of comfort, and it is too exhausted to push the emotion away.

When the creature is done, they place it down at the mouth of the log.

At the edge of it: _tap, tap, tap._

The Vessel steps into it, obeys a soft pressure on its horns, and sits down.

A nest.

It was given a nest. A _gift._ Even though it is worthless.

It doesn’t understand.

It settles in still.

It is fed the purple sweetness. It is left to watch the two to their routine.

This time, when it hears the lullaby, it curls deeper into its nest and allows itself to listen.


	6. Chapter 6

At the beginning, the Dreamers spoke often. It took effort, reaching from one corner of a Dream to another, but it felt worth the contradictory exhaustion. Technical discussions of the Kingdom outside, first. Parts of their duties, before, and what may continue and change once they rose.

If they rose.

Arguments were few, yet violent. The words of ‘if’. The eventual spilling of their very selves, wishes, hopes, dreams. Lurien’s love for the King. His odd jealousy and distrust of all else. Herrah’s love of the daughter few any of Hallownest knew she had. Her fear of losing her, and the collapse of her Deepnest. Monomon’s secret additions to her own protection. Her selfishness in hoarding knowledge to herself, burying herself in the work few could understand.

Words broke down. Barriers between them rose, fell, rose again. The stasis of Hallownest left it unchanging, yet there was still a passage of time. Enough to go over every subject that passed through their heads a dozen times over.

Enough to simply stop speaking. For weeks, months, years at a time, with only a distant hum of the others’ existence, somewhere else. They had spoken so much. The Hollow Knight’s power ensured they would never lose themselves to Her light, but it could not stop the ages passed, dulling their emotions and hopes. All to the point that even the new Vessel, the sudden shadow with enough power to disturb them, gave them little more than a flutter of interest, a hint of change or even danger. Just enough to reach out, to pull it into another corner of Dream, to leave it there to sleep forever too.

It got out. It escaped.

And none of them much cared.

Madness, Monomon thinks. “Madness,” she even says aloud, for the novelty of saying anything.

The Teacher, to her great regret (if not surprise), thought she learned rather little in her Dreaming.

That the Hollow Knight was imperfect? She’d long suspected that. The Pale King was wise, but (though she would never say it) not always as wise as she, nor as wise as his Lady. No.

That she would not wake? With the aforementioned information, also fairly predictable. No.

That the Seal had to be broken? That Quirrel would return? No, no. She knew what she needed, she knew what she’d planned.

The Pure Vessel having quite so great a will _was_ unexpected information. None of the Dreamers were incinerated by the Radiance’s rage, though all three felt echoes of it as her power began to grow. The Vessel’s own resistance to the end protected them--its very own protectors!--though it failed to save others, or even itself. A pity.

And it seemed to have enough will to still allow parts of the Sealing spell to linger on, stretched impossibly far. Or perhaps that was their King’s doing.

Her one most unexpected and important lesson: patience. She no longer clamors with the urge to force results along, to devour every scrap of information, to drag it into her arms and not let go.

She had known there would be quite the wait before her Quirrel came back. It turns out that patience, like many things, is more difficult in practice than in theory.

But she found it. She found patience to wait, to listen, to prepare for her coming death.

And when that death seemed to come…

They hadn’t cared. _She_ hadn’t cared.

She had believed she’d learned patience, yet perhaps she’d learned apathy along with it. Perhaps they all had. She knew her own plan would result in her end, but would any of them have resisted, had the new little shadow somehow come to raise their Nail against them? There’s no way to know, but she thinks not.

Now, the Seals are broken, and the Dream. Not by the new Vessel, as far as she knows, but what? This rouses her from her tired indifference, though not her sleep.

Certainly, the sky shifting from putrid orange and a real ground appearing had been a glorious sight. While she can’t truly leave, she feels more and more awake with every tiny change that comes.

The strange foreign being’s sudden disappearance after just as sudden an appearance was disappointing. That strangeness was not the first odd turn, though, so she slowly keeps going. Perhaps she will find it again. She will certainly find something.

Patience is most helpful as the sealing spell’s remains weigh her down. She could, perhaps, slip out of it. She isn’t certain she could find it again if she does, however. It would be best not to lose it.

Slowed, Monomon quests across the shifting world, reveling in the differences.

The temperature drops enough to be noticeable, if not enough to be uncomfortable. There’s no sign of the Light in the sky, forever waiting, forever burning. Before long, the sky itself isn’t any brighter than the horizon stretching out through the fog in all directions.

Where the tattered parts of spell and grass had poked through the ground, flowers, too, were beginning to sprout. Some were golden, growing from cracks, wide and low. There is Dream-knowledge that these flowers can hide things beneath seemingly-innocent petals. Monomon is careful to keep her limbs from brushing those.

Others were blue, shining, standing out even against the sky. Those didn’t care about the space in the stones, instead growing straight up as if they didn’t notice it wasn’t dirt. When she murmurs her thoughts aloud, these flowers repeat her words back a few times before fading back to silence.

There are even tinier things. A rustle of wind. The scent of dirt under rainfall. No rainfall itself, but traces of water over the landscape.

A world stirring to life. Absolutely exciting.

She passes a small puddle of water. Her thoughts idly drift to the acid of home.

The puddle shivers with bubbles.

She halts in her hovering.

It changes back when she stops paying attention. So little, yet so much more than she’d had before! The Radiance would never allow such influence over Her realm.

Monomon tries again. It bubbles, shifts to green. It stays for quite some time, though it changes back to water once she retreats or stops paying attention to it for a while. Imperfect control, but still something.

Progressing ahead, puddles shift from clear water to a blue as bright as the Blue Lake’s, growing into ponds. The blue flowers grow more numerous, nearly drowning out the gold. Odd plants stick out of the water, rustling their brown heads together. White splinters of spell surround them, through them.

She wonders if the plants are edible. Strange. She can’t remember the last time she thought about food.

The spell weighs her down further in this part of the land, until she’s nearly dragging on the ground. No further this way, nor any further no matter how far up or down that part of she travels.

She wonders.

What’s left of the spell is powerful, even broken to pieces. Her control is not much, but it is there. The other Dreamers have woken, but they’re too far to reach. Now, she wants to. The spell is likely still left in their resting places, if not still lingering on them…

Her abilities and supplies are limited, but what the Weavers and the King have provided are high quality. Being asleep already mean her concentration has far less need to waver or break. She has her own power, tired and disused as it is. She gathers the Sealing spell pieces she can find, extending her reach through them as an extension of her own feelers.

Hallownest surrounds her. The Dreamers wait, though one--Herrah, she would bet her mind on--is moving.

The Hollow Knight is a distant hiss of nothingness, somewhere impossibly far and yet seeming curiously close.

Weaver-web and liquid are different. Though she could detect changes through even uncoded acid of home, Monomon isn’t a spider. She knows the spell is caught on something more than the Hollow Knight, and she does not know what.

She could wait. She could hold onto that patience she recently had time to extol in her thoughts.

She doesn’t want to.

Monomon takes the lines of spell and _pulls_.

* * *

Further than any denizen of Hallownest had ever dared imagine--

Frisk bolts upright.

It’s the middle of the night. There’s nowhere to go, though Frisk’s limbs are tingling with the urge to move. When they look over at the windowsill, their stickbug is, for the first time, not still. They’re walking. Pacing.

Frisk’s heart is thundering in their chest. Go, something says.

Nuh-uh, they argue, setting a palm on their chest. They’re tired, mom would be mad if they ran away suddenly, and they don’t even know where!

But that’s not entirely true.

There’s a feeling of…something. Frisk moves over to the window, to pick their stickbug’s container up, and then to stick their own head all the way out the window to look towards that something-feeling. It doesn’t totally surprise them when their eyes draw to the mountains, just a few bumps of darkness hiding stars from the sky on the horizon.

No. They aren’t going there now. They tell the feeling that, even though it feels like a something and not a someone that actually might hear.

But they haven’t visited any of the little villages popping up in a while, they guess, closing the window again and dropping back onto their bed. Their stickbug’s container is still in their hands. They’re looking at Frisk, not moving anymore.

Frisk says sorry. They’re not sure why, or what for. Not sure why and what for they don’t put it back, either, instead setting it on the space between their wall and the pillow. They’re prickling and uneasy and want somebody close, but if they go talk to Mom she’ll ask too many questions or worry too much. Maybe their stickbug can feel it too.

They can talk to Asgore. He visits a lot. They can maybe go on his next trip. See if there’s anything actually there, and even if there’s not, they can go see some of their friends. And get some more donuts. Muffet’s not up there, but some of her spiders are. They like her spiders more than her or her pet, even though they feel sorta guilty about it.

They don’t like getting ate. Or tied up in webs. It feels pretty gross.

Their stickbug’s watching them closely. Frisk wonders if they’re worried.

They say something reassuring and get back under their covers.

They can text Asgore in the morning. It’d be nicer than now, ‘cause he’d probably answer even if they woke him up. Talking to him ends up making them feel weirdly bad half the time, and they’re not going out of their way to make that easier.

For now, they curl up in bed, telling themselves it’s all fine.

They watch their stickbug withdraw to their nest in the middle, and they shut their eyes and try to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally going to be a fairly straightforward bug tank AU. that's def still the main point of this! it's just that plot's going in some other directions on top of that.

It glimpsed the realm of dreams many times within its imprisonment, the sweeping of Her Light burning their thoughts to temporary unconsciousness. Again, almost clearly, in shaky half-recalled moments as She was torn away from its rotting body.

Before it has its bearings, the Vessel knows where it is.

The sky being blue instead of orange is unusual. Different. Impossible.

The Vessel lies still, listening intently. Waiting.

It hears no screams or whispers. It feels no spark of burning pain.

After too many moments, it forces past and roughly discards its initial blind terror.

Petals rustle and fall as it shifts. Not pink. Yellow.

Its arm is constricted against its body. This is familiar.

The chains and armor that once bound it are missing. Instead, only the spell that sealed it within them, as an anchor, is left.

It looks down at itself.

…Or not. This spell is different. Tangled haphazardly around its body, white light flickering madly, it is broken.

_(The world rocks, She howls out in bewildered rage, the layers of the Egg shatter under a massive curve of silver, there is fear, there is change, there is white and black and everything is pieces and light and broken broken broken)_

This is of the Dreamers.

A Seal unbreakable, broken. A Sleep unwakable, awoken.

Perhaps. It cannot tell. Has not been able to in quite some time, once Light overwhelmed everything.

Whether they woke or not should not matter to it.

Do not hope.

…It did. It does.

They were there to keep it safe. There to assist in ensuring the containment of Her. Father’s most loyal. Father’s most intelligent. Father’s sharpest rival, the Beast--who should have mattered the least, whose sacrifice mattered little to Father--yet it remembered its non-void sister through glimpses and cracked memories, and realizes it wished safe all the same.

By the end, it likely failed in this. It cannot recall.

With jolts and starts, its body is slowly hauled along, dragging through stems and dirt. It hurts, but not much. The Vessel does not bother resisting.

The spell…cannot be Her. She would not wield the Pale King’s light. Even if it were possible, She would refuse it as beneath her. Disgusting. Tainted. She loathed him more than the Void itself.

She told it that, when she deigned to speak with it at all. The words burned into it, a truth, a scar.

Its fate does not matter. Crushed by Light, swallowed by Dream, stolen again by what is not known. It can and shall only wait for what comes. With its existence in the Palace, and its time with the giant creatures, it has had more than a failed thing had any right to.

Petals and seeds fall onto its carapace. Dream motes flicker around the edges of its vision. It nearly crushes the treasonous flickers of fear that remain. Grasping emptiness, it tells itself not to think.

It fails. It tries not to guess if it will ever again see the creatures and the nest it was given.

Between pieces of its mantra of _do-not-do-not-do-not,_ it counts the flowers that bump against the edge of its mask.

Until a voice calls out. Red flickers in the distance. Its head tilts, instinctively tracking it with its functioning eye.

It catches sight of the smaller of the great creatures, standing and staring among the flowers.

The odd symbol glows from the center of their chest, distinct against the gold and strands of blue stretching to every horizon.

The creature calls out again. The words are strange, strained, cutting through the heavy silence of this place, and somehow--

The Vessel _understands._

They’re calling for it to stop. To wait.

An order.

It does not understand how; it does not have to. It merely follows what it is told, twisting sideways until its body is more difficult to yank along.

This causes more pain. The Vessel doesn’t care, and not due to the nothingness it should have.

Do not feel. Do not, _do not--_

There is terrible relief in having concrete direction to follow. Terrible gratefulness that it is not entirely alone but for the unidentified force dragging it.

The air shifts with a soft breeze, quietly rustling the flowers together. The creature’s quick footsteps are easy to hear. And, like so many things, different.

In this Dream, the great creature is far smaller. Small enough not to shake the world with its steps. Small enough to trip once over the flowers, snarling a word it fails to understand.

Small enough to leap onto the Vessel once they catch up.

Its body twitches beneath their solid weight on its fragile carapace, though it quickly braces and stills. They adjust, swinging their legs over until they sit on its stomach. It gives an odd pang.

The creature puffs, reaffirming the order.

A blade flashes into their hand. Silver, red glinting off the edge. It wonders wildly if they will slay it now that their sizes are far closer. A bizarre sense of honor? A dislike or fear that it has grown greater than they?

It reminds itself it does not matter. Do not think, and do not feel.

In truth...

It would prefer to die by their hand than by a stranger’s.

Instead, after a measuring stare and tensing when they’re both yanked over the ground, the creature wedges the edge against the strings of spell and its body. The silver makes a harsh noise and does nothing. The odd red light, the same shade as the chest symbol’s glow, makes slow progress.

You’re pretty stuck, it hears. More stuck than the creature had been.

It takes some time. Longer that it could, as the creature pauses at every jolt, trying not to cut into it. There are a few nicks even so, which prompts hasty apologies.

It is uncertain as to why. Worse has happened. These cuts barely sting.

It is not its place to wonder. To rush. It counts the flowers again, adding their breaths, futilely digging its feet into the dirt.

After over three hundred of each, the spell breaks with an uncomfortable flash and _crunch-snap,_ flying free against the flowers. Caught petals rip and flutter through the air.

The creature heaves a sigh it feels through its entire body, hopping up to stand next to it. The tiny blade is held near their face, scrutinized. For damage, perhaps.

Its arm drops to rest at its side. It hadn't noticed the constraint had left an ache.

The creature’s gaze follows the trail of the broken spell, still moving in starts. Then their gaze drops to rest on the Vessel at their feet.

They stare. It waits for another order.

They stick out their hand to hover somewhere above its chest. Its head moves to watch it. Perhaps they won’t use words at all, now that they don’t have to. Perhaps there will be an alternative to tapping.

They make a soft clicking noise in their mouth and ask what it’s doing.

Empty things cannot answer. Things that only wish they were empty cannot (will not).

They lean forward, wiggling their fingers. Come on, they say. Grab it.

In a fluid motion, the Vessel does.

They pull it upward, and it takes this as an order to stand entirely. The small creature helps somewhat. Without their massive size, they hold far less strength.

It sways and straightens as much as it is able.

They peer at its hand and let out a strange laugh, still holding their own with no order or attempt to release. They give it a squeeze, moving it up and down, and they say something about it knowing how to greet friends.

It partly fails to process this, barely catching an introduction following after: they’re Frisk. Frisk the Human. It’s nice to meet it the right way, without lights or the plastic or size difference getting in the way.

The Vessel, same as ever, is silent.

Unusually, it stares down into the creature’s face. Frisk. Frisk’s face.

Friends.

The Great Knights were comrades and friends. The Hive and Deepnest were called friends of each other.

A term beyond simple allies. It understands that much.

A concept half-known. An important one, it thinks.

It stops. Do not think.

Frisk says they are friends. Therefore, this is what they are. Knowing more than that is unnecessary.

It will be told what duties being a friend entails eventually. If it is not, and if it is not discarded, it will learn through trial and error.

Frisk withdraws their hand.

They ask if it’s hurt. They ask how it is. They ask for a name.

It cannot give any of those things. It averts its gaze from their face to somewhere above their head. Properly.

Frisk makes a discontented noise. The questions stop.

Quickly, their attention is caught by something else. When their head jerks around, it twists as well.

It is weak. It is unarmed. It is still a Vessel trained to be a Knight.

No threat will harm Frisk. The Higher Being that claimed it, a terribly merciful creature, a thing called friend.

Their hand flies out to point.

The spell is a nigh-invisible thread, length trailing off somewhere beyond what they can see.

It’s time to follow it, Frisk says. To see what was trying to kidnap the both of them.

The uneasiness sparked is easy to overwhelm with another order.

The Vessel turns and lopes after the spell.

It has to slow when it hears Frisk not quite catching up. They say, together, they can look for a couple people. They met someone who--it stutters half a step, easily missed--sounds like Monomon, and they would like to maybe find her. And another person, another human. One that looks somewhat like them, but has skin that’s lighter than brown and a shirt that’s green.

It repeats these descriptions to itself.

Time passes as they track the spell strands. It does not know how much. One eye on the spell strand and straining to sense others is too much to count. The creature keeps pausing to look for clues, or to pluck petals.

After some silence, Frisk continues. Tells that it might not happen. They’ve been getting lost a lot. This place is always doing something weird and different.

And,

as though their words were a call,

a beam of blinding light flashes directly upward at the edge of the horizon.

It hopes. It fears. It freezes, going against everything it should be. Again, again, again.

The scream that comes could be only an echo of its pathetic past. Something that is nothing.

Beside it, Frisk stares outward with wide eyes, and proves it all false with a few bewildered words.

And the Vessel barely hears it, already staggering blindly in another direction, warring with itself, spell utterly forgotten. 

Run away. 

Fulfill your purpose.

Run.

Contain.

_Run--_


	8. Chapter 8

Locked within bonds, the Radiance screams.

Her new container is invisible. The shape of its mind is something she cannot feel out, as though stretching further than where the Light can reach. And yet, when she struggles, her wings strike hard. The sensation of something sticky and disgustingly damp shivers down against her body with every lash, every flare of light flung.

The Void had smothered. Contained.

It had taken some doing to dig a furrow into the Vessel’s mind. Its will had been its own challenge, while the antithesis of its nature had been a far greater problem. A veil, keeping it from her.

Its fragile sense of self had been easy to bolster. Love of and from that Wyrm, fear of failure, fear of fear, fear of any emotion. It took great waiting, chipping away at the wishes, whispers of thought that so rarely extended from the darkness.

She had nearly succeeded. She had crushed its feeble mind, had peered out through its eyes, had controlled it as she desired. All she had to do was wait for her power to grow. The Egg would be scorched, the Vessel left behind, the Light blazing free.

And then.

Something else. Something unpredictable. Impossible. _**New.**_

The smothering Void is not what contains her now.

She has not had to struggle so for ages. Her reach broke through her previous prison, through the weak Wyrm-kept insects of Hallownest, spreading with almost no effort.

She cannot stop dwelling. Gods should not be forgotten, of course, and faith in herself was all she had for a time. She should not forget. Another usurper, another attempt to murder her, another attempt to tear away what she deserves.

She had been so, so very close--

_LET GO. LET GO. LET. GO._

She knows not what she screams against. Cares not. Her Infection-drawn power is already dwindling, and a cold trail of fear is lancing through her body. Her progress has been erased, and now she cannot find a hold on her surroundings.

_LET ME GO. THE DAWN WILL BREAK. LIGHT WILL BLAZE FREE._

_I WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN._

_I WILL BE ONCE MORE._

_RELEASE ME._

A burst stabs up, out, ripping through _something_ before it refracts and reflects, stinging her eyes with her own Light. Something dry and dusty joins the dampness showering against her ruff.

After time, and space, and silence, a word drops into her thoughts, as small and unwelcoming as whatever else is dirtying her.

**No.**

She is startled enough to pause in her resistance.

A word, fully formed.

It has been quite some time since she has experienced that.

 _YOU WILL,_ she rallies, sending flashes through whatever is obscuring her. _I SHALL--_

**Kill me.**

Boredom. Resignation. Dullness. She throws herself against it.

_\--NO._

_IF I MUST DO BATTLE, I SHALL. If I do not, I will not._

_FREEDOM WILL BE MINE. What-ever you expect to gain by my capture, I can give you a far greater reward. We can discuss this; merely allow me closer._

An echo of something. Better: a spark.

**Hm.  
Is that what you believe.**

_I KNOW. I am the Light and Dream incarnate._

Another spark, at ‘dream.’ She digs in, glints shining light on more. A desire. A hope. A voice, _“Take care of Mom and Dad--”_ Things are what they are, but that fails to stop a longing for something lost.

_I AM THE HOLDER OF POWER BEYOND WHAT CAN BE IMAGINED. My weakness is temporary; I will fly from this prison regardless of your interference. Yet, I loathe pointless conflict. I prefer unity and peace of mind. My freedom would likely destroy you._

To that, there is something almost like hope. It’s likely only the limited space of wherever she is that halts her from recoiling in utter disgust.

She masks it with words, laced with more emotion than she was attempting. This may not hinder anything. _Destruction is such an ugly, unworthy outcome. There is no need for either of us to be forgotten nor ended. I know of greater futures. How to grow it, change it for the better._

**Oh.  
With your guidance.  
You will lead me to a better fate.**

The voice is wooden. Littered with pauses, almost drowsy. She cannot particularly tell if a query is being aimed at her.

_I will. My own knew to love me. My Light, my choices. The one who smothered my Light was envious. This lead to the destruction of me and mine._

**And yet.  
You are here.**

Is there an accusation hidden in that? When was the last time she had spoken to another?

_The one who destroyed me will never be named. He deserves to be cast away and forgotten by even history. I will not end you. I have only to end him, and his own._

The Radiance is struck with a flare. Rage, drowning fear beneath. Eyes of creatures like the one that had struck her into this cage, staring with varying levels of revulsion, mirrored back within their head. Thoughts, murmurs. Their hatred.

 _“Asriel. Asriel, you don’t know anything about humans.They are disgusting and dangerous. They don’t matter. The monsters do. Your kingdom. Asriel, fight. Asriel, FIGHT. We can erase them. They will kill you. ERASE-- ASRIEL, THOSE ARE GUNS,_ NOW, _I-- DO IT_ NOW--"

A most perfect kindling.

_You have enemies of your own. Cruel creatures, those who turn away from what is wrong and what is right at the worst times. We share an understanding._

_I will take what is mine again. You shall take what you deserve; you shall end which deserves to be ended._

_It will be so simple. Free my Light, and you will set right what has gone wrong._

A heavy silence descends. She is patient, aware of churning thoughts nearby, though once again her captor hides their contents.

**I will not.  
My leadership. My hatred. My desire to destroy them all.  
Destroyed only what I loved.**

**I am not one to take control.**

_Then allow myself. If utter destruction is not your desire, I will leave that kind be. I will resist my fate. I will not be erased. The breaking of dawn will not stop._

**The ability to change fate has been ceded to another.**

_\--What?_

This was not a response she had prepared for.

**I am dead.  
And so are you.**

**Now.**

**Rest.**

This is a sheer command. A roar, dull and flat as it is.

And a realization crashes into, nightmarish and impossible.

The Light of her form is not being smothered, it is being drained. The _thing_ is turning power back at her.

_THE LIGHT CANNOT BE CONSUMED._

**Are you aware.  
I am examining your thoughts, as well?  
The corpses you have left. The creatures you have…sickened. The eradication of so many.  
Is against my increased understanding.  
I.  
Have learned from mistakes made.**

The Radiance only thrashes harder.

She cannot see them, but she can feel the other watching her with great dispassion. And soon, they do precisely what they told her to do. They sink into Dream beyond her reach.

Outside, the Vessel is reeled away from, as well as the original little thing that had flung her into this new prison in the first place. She will not simply transfer herself back to her own sealed coffin, nor expose herself to something that can so easily crush her.

She desperately strains her power. She will feel beyond, find another place to free herself and convalesce.

She has made it this far.

The Radiance will never die.


	9. Chapter 9

The world is made of so many flowers and so much foggy sky, and yet it can tell where the Light came from. A sear in its vision. An invisible blemish on the horizon.

Its stomach churns beneath its shell. Its scars throb and itch.

Please.

Please means nothing.

It is terrified.

It exists for a reason.

It should not.

It.

It is here.

It cannot feel.

Should not.

Must not.

Do not feel.

Do not think.

Do not hope.

Do not.

The Vessel must not.

It must not fail again.

Frisk follows in its stumbling footsteps. Perhaps they believe it has seen their friend. It cannot--will not--cannot falter to turn and stop them. Hesitance will allow its flaws to win.

And still, it hears Her scream.

Do not think.

The flowers become more sparse. It can take several steps without brushing even one. Perhaps She has killed them.

The world itself stops. The Vessel ignores the breath of awe behind it.

Do not feel.

There is no more sky above. The flowers at the edge do not move with gentle waves of wind.

There is nothing. Not the black of Void. Not the blinding blur of Light. Simply a space, indescribable, where nothing is. Where nothing should be.

Still, there is.

Suspended in the expanse of nothing, a single spot of color or shadow, the Radiance is trapped. The only sign of Her is a smothered glow inside, dampened screams; the cage is keeping Her caught tight.

Do not hope.

It is made of blackened wood, that cage. Winding roots, yet not.

Branches. Growing upward from a point of earth that does not exist, tangling ever-smaller, where flowers have blossomed as well. The greyish petals and red leaves stick and cling to each other, and presumably to Her.

As they watch together, the twisted cocoon shudders again with frantic thrashing.

_Do not._

The Hollow Knight steps forward. If it can gather its remaining power, it can throw itself forward. Get to Her.

A hand locks around its wrist.

It is standing on the edge, and Frisk is pulling it backwards. It digs the points of its feet down into crumbling dirt.

A maskless face shows too much. There is terror and something else in theirs when it looks back. 

No, Frisk says.

_No._

It must. Can’t they see? The cocoon is dying. Splitting. Her Light is too powerful. It must do something.

It pulls its arm away. Their feet slide across the ground. Their grip does not break.

Their fingers are warm.

The Vessel is made for this. It must. _It has to._

No, Frisk snaps. Orders. The SOUL-heart-claim shape shines bright in the center of their chest.

It is much bigger than they. Stronger. It can make the leap. It must make the attempt.

It would take Frisk with it.

 _You are the Hollow Knight,_ Father murmured. He did not have to speak loudly. His word was law. His word was absolute, falling straight into their mind, and muffling sound of unworthy Siblings falling behind--

He created it for this. He created it for nothing beyond this. He entrusted it with the fate of everything that ever mattered. The Pale King had no need for failure and it cannot be a failure, not again, not anymore--

The Light pulses. Her fury rings through its mind. Is this now? Is it memory?

It must do this.

It must.

It is faltering. It is failing.

It failed already.

It is broken, it is worthless, it has failed, it will fail again. It had failed before She had ripped it apart from the inside out.

It must.

It knows it cannot.

If it does, what will happen? To them? To it? To Her? What terrible things might she use its ruined body for? It aches with memory of pain and fear; their own, Hers atop it.

It is tired.

It is terrified.

Still, again, always.

Do not,

do not,

_do not,_

_do not--_

Frisk yanks it back again, both hands dragging, and both collapse backwards when it does not resist.

Stems snap under their weight. The world shakes with Her fury.

The world is smothered in a haze. It lies there, unmoving, and stares into the sky.

Soon, the silence breaks.

There are words. Commands. It cannot hear enough to comprehend them.

If only it could do so.

If only it could never have understood them.

If only it were a truly perfect Vessel, animated just enough to do what it was ordered. No mind, no will. Barely more than a Kingsmould.

It’s thinking again.

Frisk is above it. It has no memory of their standing up. It had landed on top of them. They clawed their way out from beneath it. Its memory is blurring, piecing the order together incorrectly.

The air is warm enough to be stifling. Its body is cold.

They hold out their hand. Stand up, they might be saying. The only sound it hears is dull ringing, echoing through its mask. It would only make sense.

The Vessel takes their hand and stands as well. Its movement is painfully slow.

It does not look back to where She is kept. It nearly does, but it hears a clear _no!_ and it stops itself. Frisk takes a look back themselves, and whatever their judgement is, it obeys when they pull it along.

It already knew it was a failure. It already knew it would be useless. Why was the true sight of Her enough for it to forget?

The worthless Vessel cannot bear this. It cannot control itself. It cannot do anything.

It narrows the world down to only the flowers brushing past it legs and Frisk’s tight grip. The flowers are mostly crushed by the time its feet lands on them. Their fingers have interwoven with its.

It does not pay attention to what direction they choose. It is numb. Empty. Still, not enough.

Eventually, they stop. Frisk is staring at it. It stares past them, through lifetime habit more than a futile attempt to be perfect.

After a few fruitless queries of if the Vessel is hurt, Frisk commands it to lie down. It wonders why, after they had done so much work to keep it standing, and then dashes the wretched thought away. It does not need to know. No need, no right to know, no right to have the desire to know.

Frisk walks around it until they stand somewhere above its mask. In the upper half of its vision, it watches them lie down as well, hair fanning out to brush over its horns.

Sometimes it’s just nice to lie down and feel like garbage, Frisk tells it. Especially together.

Garbage? So they know it is refuse. Together? Had it done something to make them feel the same? Ignoring them, failing them?

It does not need to know.

It has never known.

What do they want with it?

Stop asking. Stop thinking. Do not, just stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

The world shifts.

The flowers burst into blue, the ground crawls with black. It startles. Frisk does as well.

Yet Frisk does not move to stand, and it follows their lead. Once the world has rearranged itself, it is darker. Gentler. Lights flutter around, similar to Lumaflies freed, if far too yellow.

A dull stirring fills it.

Frisk talks to it. About admiring the view. They’d been to a place just like this, called Waterfall. It was not nearly as flat as this, nor had so many flowers.

And then, about monsters. They met Toriel, the white monster, in a place that was far more purple, and that it was still her favorite color. Frisk doesn’t really understand how it’s not boring after so long.

And then, about skeletons. About pies. About the name they chose for themselves. About sometimes gardening with one called Asgore.

After some time, the Vessel realizes they have no goal in telling it these things. This is not memorization for a task. This is simply speech. Talking for the sake of it.

The sake of _it._

As if it were simply another monster. As if it were fit for such things.

With such similar sizes, its shaking is shamefully obvious.

This, finally, is what prompts Frisk to sit up.

They really wish it would tell them what’s wrong, Frisk says.

If it had a voice to cry out, could it? Would it?

Once again offered, it clings to their hand. They do not try to lift it to stand. 

It wishes, it wishes, it wishes it were not here. It wishes it had not found Her, that it had not remembered how useless it was, that it could simply hide within Frisk’s fingers instead of holding them.

They have two hands, and they allow it its weakness, stroking along its horns the same as if they were still their giant size. This requires some leaning to reach it.

Selfishly, it does not discourage this. By now, they must be aware enough of its imperfection.

It cannot begin to understand why they refuse to care, but again. Understanding is not the Vessel’s place.

There are no more words. Its shaking lessens. It hates how it cannot quite stop.

And this is how it goes. Frisk and the Vessel wait, listening to nothing beyond the rustle of petals and distant trickles of water.

Until the serenity is broken by a soft exclamation of shock.

“Well, here you are,” says a voice that cuts to its core.

It is on its feet before it can think. Frisk scrambles up to match.

Oh, they say, and they do not sound pleased. It is far too stunned to look at their expression.

Monomon laughs softly. “It is nice to see you both again. Little one. Hollow Knight.”

The title washes dull shame and exhaustion through it. Frisk is a quick distraction.

She interrupted some important bonding, they insist. That was rude.

“Certainly,” she says, “forgive my intrusion, but I just had to find out what had been caught in my line. And what had extended one portion of the world into another!”

It notes the spell’s remains around her only as she slides out of them. She survived? Is this truly her, or a trick of the Radiance? No. Frisk had mentioned her earlier, and they seem far from Infected.

It has felt too much. It wants to leave, and it is too overwhelmed to even be disgusted by the wanting.

Frisk and the Teacher break into discussion. It waits, far too affected to comprehend most of it. The Dreamers are alive. Monomon is trapped here. There is something about a mask. Frisk is still displeased by the interruption. Hallownest has fallen, yet the Infection is different.

“And I would like you to find Quirrel, to find me. Either of you, though you seem more likely to make the trip. You are far less damaged,” Monomon says to Frisk, who bristles and bumps their arm against its side.

It straightens without thought, mind swimming. She is not wrong. It failed, it is ruined. It does not know what she thinks of it. It had not met her enough to find a grasp on her moods and habits, unlike the Pale King.

Hallownest. The Kingdom had died, and yet fragments still lived. What else lived? Had its sister…?

It does not know what to think. It attempts to pare it to gratefulness that it did not kill the Dreamers in its many failures, and identifying the gentle warmth it feels in its chest. Nothing like the Radiance. It has had this sensation for quite some time. The contrast of this and Her so close together merely leaves it properly noticeable.

Frisk is shaking their head. They’re telling her about not remembering something, because they forget half their dreams.

“No need to worry about that,” says Monomon. “Here. I’ve already done a little work with what I have. It’s more or less a crafted homing beacon, now that I have better supplies.”

A container is produced from nowhere, held out for them to see. It knows this, it realizes. The Pale King had been brought some of the Archives’ particular acids. Information encoded into the liquid.

“It should have already been working, but this will be more accurate.”

Frisk appears skeptical. They turn to ask it what it thinks, and it stills itself further when Monomon looks to it. There is a knowing spark within the eyes of her mask, and it attempts to crush a different sort of fear.

SOUL-stuff is always weird, and she isn’t even a monster, they whisper to it. It doubts the functionality of this, as their whisper is rather loud.

“It should be simple. Attraction to my mask, and Quirrel will be glad to help lead you to me,” she says, unscrewing the acid’s top with a hiss.

“I would like to wait, if I could. It’s particularly difficult to find the same place twice here, so I do not believe--”

She does not wait.

In one fluid movement, the acid is dumped over the red shape hovering over Frisk’s chest.

It should do nothing unless ordered, and yet their scream rocks them to their core.

“--that would be a reasonable option.”

They saved it. They called it friend. They know what it is, they know how it failed, and it is a Knight, has it not already sworn itself to them?

Too late, it leaps forward. Too late, it yanks them back.

It holds them tightly in its arms.

Arms?

“Oh! Now you look like how I last saw you,” Monomon says. There is inflection in her voice that it does not understand, _does not care about_ and it warps back, far out of her reach. Frisk’s breath shudders once, and they quickly pat it on the shoulder. That sucked, they say, but they’re fine, and they’re glad it helped.

_Thank you._

Its armor, there as suddenly as its arms, shatters in a burst of blinding white.

Frisk’s weight disappears. It jolts itself upright, single hand reaching blindly and bumping into the edge of its nest of flowers.

Warm, bewildered eyes blink open beyond its cell.

Frisk looks at it. It, unprompted, shaky, dizzy, (do not, do nothing, be nothing) stands and comes closer.

Not long after that, it is lifted to wait on the edge of their pillow. Similar to how their first encounter had gone.

They murmur to it, and even in the realm of waking, it can understand their words.

_Hollow Knight. Is that you? Is that your name?_

They hold out their hand.

There is so much it cannot tell them. There is so much it wishes it could.

Perhaps it will, some day, somehow.

Tentative. Slow. Afraid of itself, its failures, its mistakes. Itself.

It climbs into their hand, and curls itself into their palm. Again, Frisk's finger brushes ever-so-carefully over its horns, and there is no desire to escape it.


	10. Chapter 10

Some monsters packed up and headed to the nearest human city immediately.

Some monsters slipped away to climates most suited to them, truly, rather than made with magic approximate.

Some monsters stayed Underground.

Some kept to Mt. Ebott, simply choosing to stay on the surface.

Some wanted to live in the mountains, looked at the place that had imprisoned their kind for generations, and said ‘but not on that one.’

Asgore understands.

There are many villages around now. He had some say in their names, and the one he chose for one built in a place of many flowers was, of course, Flower Town. It happened to be one of his favorites for just that! He hadn’t said as much, but he’d caught many monsters boasting of it anyway. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so obvious in building a full-on home there…

It was Flower Town that Frisk texted him about at the crack of dawn.

He was going to be travelling up to the mountains soon anyway. He’d been planning to go to Ebott first, but it was rare enough that Frisk asked to go anywhere but there (or contacted him at all) that he didn’t have much issue with changing his plans for the next day.

Soon enough, the plans are made, and it’s not a day later that they head out together.

Toriel looks stormy in a different way than she often does when he’s around, and so does Frisk. They say a few words about not being allowed to bring Hollow Knight (ah, that little insect they’d shown off to him a few days ago, with a rather creative name too) and how it was an argument, and they don’t seem to want to say more about it, or about exactly why they want to go.

This is hardly the first time Frisk’s had a mysterious quest. They’d disappeared into Mt. Ebott once for nearly a day after Asgore himself had gone through it to check on what was left, returning with golden flower stains on their knees and a strange mood just like this one.

“Undyne and Alphys are coming later. They were going to come ride with us, but Undyne's been taking cooking lessons. They’ll be around by sundown! Or at least by morning. Hopefully, there can be a sleepover with all of you,” he says brightly, trying to cheer them. It seems to work for a moment before they go back to staring out the window.

They claim a headache when he tries to talk a bit more, and he goes quiet.

Asgore’s…worried. The sudden quest was something he could go along with. The other signs…

Their clothes aren’t right. They’re in a red shirt dotted with some tiny pattern creating stripes across the middle and blue pants. It’s something they’re quite particular about; matching clothes, down to the shade. Something must be preoccupying them for this to slip their mind so.

Perhaps their head truly aches so badly, but they’ve never wanted to travel without music on the radio before. They aren’t even paying attention to the view, or they’d be pointing out random things they’re interested in, like windmills or the changing leaves.

Something is wrong.

But…

Asgore doesn’t ask. If something is wrong, perhaps they’ll tell him, or Toriel will find out.

It doesn’t matter how much he wishes for what used to be. His right to be a parent was forfeit long ago. Their business is their own.

* * *

Herrah is loathe to leave Deepnest, but practicality spurs her to move. Her awakening won’t mean a thing if she’s crushed. Already, she’d found the tattered remains of web-houses that had only just fallen once she stepped out, flattening the remains of others that dropped into the water in ages before. Soon, her Den itself will most likely fall to match.

So. Upwards.

The travel goes slowly. While crawling through tunnels comes easy enough, climbing no longer is. Herrah’s limbs are lacking some strength from the time she’s spent at rest, and meanwhile the webbing has tears and fragile parts that never would have stood before she went to Dream. Garapedes made it all the worse, collapsing walls and switching well-dug routes for new paths in their panic to hide somewhere in secret spots under the earth.

Altogether, this Deepnest is one she can barely recognize.

She won’t call it a shock. A sting. She knew things had gone wrong long ago, when the Radiance began to wake with her tendrils of heat. It will likely worsen once she has time to dwell on more than the red of her daughter, flitting ahead, charting a course that won’t kill them.

Her daughter, her Hornet. A name Herrah had been hoping to hear alongside her Devout, what Vespa could say she granted with pride, once she awoke.

Hornet. A good, strong name. A strong daughter.

She’s flooded with a powerful mix of love and pain.

Her last memories are of a child clinging to her hand, trying not to cry, as the Pale King’s people were standing close to supervise. Her daughter was one to copy her to the last, and no matter how strongly she felt, showing too much around _them_ was something the ruler of Deepnest refused to do.

She thought there would be no room for regrets. Now, certainties made in the past mean little. This is a world and life she must relearn.

During pauses, times for breathing and feasting on freshly-killed Dirtcarvers, her daughter strives to tell her of all that befell the world after the Infection was again released. Herrah knows little more than the breaking of the Hollow Knight and the appearance of the new little shadow. And, of course, this new calamity from unknown source.

“I am…unused to speaking more than I must,” Hornet says. Herrah can hear an undercurrent of mixed emotion beneath the admission. Though that could be herself, projecting.

She sits tall, body and voice taut, Needle ready at any moment. Deepnest was never to be safe, and Hallownest less so beneath its shining exterior, yet this vigilance leaves an ache.

Hornet tells the mother that barely knows her about her protection of what little scraps still live, killing or warning off whatever threats she can, which are many; the swathes lying dead; what remained left in more terrible states, lost to the illness and shambling in a facsimile of life again.

How so many had _left._

While there is no judgement in her tone, she watches her mother with sharp eyes for her response.

“The Weavers, back to their ancestral home,” Herrah muses, idly. She cannot begrudge them this. “And you stayed.”

Hornet, for the first time, startles minutely. “Of course. I stayed. I could not just leave…”

She grips her Needle tighter.

While they were speaking, Little Weavers began to gather and hover, muffled screeches shaking the webbing they hide behind. They know her, and they know their Princess. Herrah can hear pieces of words, too broken to be heard as much more than sounds of awe.

“We must keep going,” Hornet says, sounding too shaken for the question hidden within a statement, and she moves.

Herrah will not be left behind. If for nothing more than practicality, though that seems to hardly be the case.

Many of her Devout know her face, allowing her to pass. Those who lost their senses to the Infection so far they attack are battled in kind, Herrah granting them a swift death.

Hornet offers her skills, and Herrah waves her down. “I know you have proven your prowess in battle lifetimes over,” Herrah says softly, hefting a body to one side, “but this is my duty.” She only wishes she could know if something would come along and eat it, as she and Hornet are both sated, and she knows none of the family that lingers here. Perhaps it will be fit for only the glowing fungus to devour if the tunnel crashes down.

The next pause is just outside where the Mask Maker should be working. The workshop is dark and empty of half its supplies, Hornet reports.

The next climb will be particularly arduous, damp leaves from the White Lady’s gardens clinging to the walls. Too tiny in this darkness to properly anchor webbing to.

Herrah sits on a ledge, gathering her strength. Her daughter is tiny, standing beside her.

Now that there’s been time to digest new facts, she has more to wonder about. “And what of the little shadow? The one that tried to learn to wake us?”

Her daughter glances back over her shoulder. “Little shad--the little ghost? It reached you?”

Little ghost? “I see we share taste in naming,” she says with a touch of amusement. “No, it didn’t. We reached it, knowing what it would try, and it was slippery enough to get away. What do you know of it?”

“…It is powerful enough to survive. Greater than the others.”

Others. Herrah dips her head in question, and Hornet begins again.

Her daughter tells Herrah of her siblings. The Vessels. Plural. Not only the Hollow Knight, not only the little ghost, but more. So very many _more_ that stole into Hallownest, searching blindly for the Pale King’s reason for their existence.

“I could not let them endanger what was left. But the little ghost proved itself to be more skilled and powerful than any that came before it. I…was defeated, twice. It proved itself worthy of the King’s Brand, to have a chance. To be given an ability to change things, to know the truth of its creation.”

And a cruel tale that was. More than even Hornet had realized until she looked upon the Abyss, opened by the little ghost, giving a view of so many empty masks scattered across ledges.

After a deep pause, Herrah says, “I suspected there was something else to their creation. The Pale King was not as perfect as he wished, though the height of such depravity was not something I bore witness to, and I regret you know more than I.”

The never-silence of Deepnest falls over them. Hornet is standing sentinel, eyes fixed on a corpse collapsed on a wooden platform below. A fallen Little Weaver, left from something that came through before. The little shadow, or the unknown calamity occurring now, or overwhelmed by Infection.

“…Herrah. Mother. I’m--I must apologize.”

“Oh? For what? The King’s mistakes are not your own.”

Beneath the rumbles echoing around them, she hears Hornet take a long breath. “No. Not for him. I…didn’t stop the Vessel. I was not protecting you. Perhaps…because I hadn’t allowed myself to…hope, for so long, I pounced on what fresh scrap I was given. A foolish decision in any case. Anything too strong is a tool to infect, such sentimentality is only one such thing. I was so close to…to allowing your death in a gamble.”

Oh. Herrah understands, somewhat, and it hurts. For her, she had gone to rest forever. For her, she had wanted a future. All for her, and all had failed.

“Daughter. Hornet. Look at me.” Reluctantly, her head turns back, two eyes locking with six. “While I cannot say I regret keeping my life, our lands have fallen. If your words are fully true, my Dreaming was useless. You have gone through more than I ever wanted, though I bore you knowing your life would not be a simple one. You did not need to protect me; you did not even have to stay.”

“Of course I did,” Hornet says, voice strained in some smothered emotion. “I couldn’t…I would never leave. Despite all the ills that befell the world, you gave me life. Abandoning you would have been cruel and unfair beyond measure. I owe you too much of a debt for that. And these ruins do not need more desecration, the few lives that linger should be kept safe.”

Herrah is proud of her daughter as a ruler and protector of the people. Herrah is utterly horrified by her daughter’s thoughts as a mother. “You owe me _nothing,”_ she hisses, and it echoes through the cave. Where had she gotten that? What divine _trash_ had the Pale King and the White Lady put into her daughter’s mind?

She flinches. _“Herrah,”_ she says, and nothing more. Thread appears, twisting between her fingers. A nervous tic she’d seen often enough in nervous Weavers of old. Instinct tells her this is uncommon for her daughter.

“You did not choose to be born into a world falling apart. I worked with the Wyrm to give you life, for myself, for Deepnest, and then I left.” Hornet curls away. Herrah reaches out, gripping a piece of cloak against her back. She cannot allow the truth to go unsaid. “I might as well have died right then. _I_ did not protect you. If there’s a debt to be paid, it is my own. Neither of us knew the extent of the destruction that would befall everything, and you did not deserve to have the weight of worlds dropped onto your shoulders. Not my my own foolishness, not by the Pale King’s cowardice. These mistakes are ours.”

Hornet is utterly still. “Perhaps. Yet my fate is my own. I chose what I could.”

Did she? Was this a machination of the damn Wyrm’s so-called foresight? It was hardly infallible; if not, he wouldn’t have been so stunned at the price asked for Herrah’s life. How much choice even exists in such ruins?

The next silence hangs heavy. She packs away her rage at a world overly cruel for later.

“…Hornet. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m so grateful you still live, and that we have had a chance to meet. I have always loved you. I would have and will, always, no matter the path you choose--”

“Let’s go,” Hornet says in a thin, wobbly voice, and tears away to head upward before more words can be spoken.

♥

The destruction reached even the Queen’s Gardens. Vines thrice Herrah’s size litter the walkways, filling the air with sickly-sweetness as their unnatural orange thorns decay at their base, dropping like so many rotten leaves. Infected creatures lie on the ground or against walls, not moving to do more than follow movement when Hornet or Herrah pass within range of a strike. None are threatening, or even lucid.

They take a roundabout route through the White Lady’s domain and Fog Canyon. Hornet travels quickly and comically, given her seriousness, across the bouncing fungus. Herrah takes rather longer, weaving bridges betwen them to avoid dropping into acid. While it wouldn’t kill her as easily as a smaller beast or bug, it would absolutely hurt and hinder their already painfully slow pace.

The ruined paths take them to the Queen’s Station, covered in green and emptier than Herrah recalls in the few times she passed through it. She had loathed travelling through Hallownest, preferring to call the Pale King to her, and only ever chose to during deep night. There was some amusement in the cowering of late-travelling bugs away from her fearsome form, at least.

Besides the slow creeping of plant life over time, it seems nearly untouched but for a few signs fallen to the floor. “Though the Stagways are closed, this place is often safe,” Hornet says, only to immediately draw her Needle at the sound of quick footsteps.

They both follow the sound until the maker drops into view right in front of them: none other than the little shadow itself, stilling once it sees its sister and Herrah mere steps away.

Herrah leans in closer to look it over. It doesn’t move. “Smaller than I thought it’d be,” she says, mainly to herself. She hadn’t met the Hollow Knight until it had been nearly as tall as she.

“Little ghost,” Hornet says in a rushed exhale. “It’s…good to see you well.”

It turns to peer up at her, and then back to Herrah. Already more responsive than the Hollow Knight had been. Was allowed to be. The Hollow Knight was far from hollow enough, obviously, and this one likely the same. The Pale King…

Enough of the Pale King. Once Herrah finds him, if he lives at all, she’s going to have him answer for all he’s done. Until then, she’s to focus on what’s in front of her.

“This is my mother, the Queen of Deepnest. She is no longer Dreaming, as you can see. We’re travelling upwards,” Hornet informs it. “I would advise you to do the same.”

It stares a little more, then flutters back, perching on the edge of a higher platform. “It seems to be waiting for us to come along,” Herrah says. Hornet nods.

“It tends to not do that. Perhaps there’s something ahead?” she wonders pensively.

“Is there? And would you have any idea what’s caused all this chaos?” Herrah asks. “You weren’t the one to Wake us, were you?” These questions are somewhat rhetorical, and predictably no response comes, not even to look down at her. Emptiness or bravery, she’s amused at a stoic demeanor from someone so tiny.

From the center of the Station, there are only two ways left to go. They fall into discussion, where East would be more quickly passed to the Crossroads and so the surface, though there was far more acid to contend with, while West would be Fog Canyon, with explosive creatures but a more straight shot upwards where Monomon could be checked in on.

At this, the little ghost moves to the entrance of the Canyon, pausing and lashing its Nail against the ceiling. Mother and daughter come closer, and it pulls a map out.

It points to an unfilled bit of it, where the Teacher’s mask is the only thing in the empty space. “Have you truly not traveled that way?” Hornet murmurs. It taps the paper.

Herrah crouches to take a few steps inside and immediately understands. There’s been yet another cave-in, with a mountain of earth crushed together, supported only by its own weight and the structure of the Station’s edge. Oomas and Uomas bump mindlessly against the new ceiling.

Herrah slides back into the Station rather quickly. Though she hadn’t had personal experience in seeing those things explode, they were a common enough subject Monomon brought up in their Dream that she can imagine it perfectly. The structure would be unsound enough. “That route is locked off,” she says. “Thank you, little shadow.”

To say it’s pleased could be a projection of her own thoughts, but she swears there’s a tiny bounce to its step after.

“Through the rest of the Fungal Wastes, I suppose,” Hornet says. “Will you be travelling this way as well?”

In answer, it leaps and flutters to the opposite exit, turning and halting once more. “That looks like an agreement,” Herrah says.

“…It does,” Hornet agrees quietly, moves heads to follow.

With what previous words were said, Herrah doubts she minds. She knows attachment when she sees it, no matter if her daughter likes it or not.

More company could do them all good.


	11. Chapter 11

When the Vessel was left alone, it dragged its nest into the log of its cell. It is difficult to look through the plastic to see the room’s emptiness.

In the darkness, it waits, as it should. As it must.

It fears, as it shouldn’t. As it _wishes_ it could not.

Though in the realm of waking, it still understands the words spoken by Frisk, by Toriel.

Before Frisk’s departure, Toriel’s argument was fair. It had reacted badly the last time they took it from their home.

In Dream, Monomon’s words were fair. It is terribly damaged, and far tinier besides.

Hallownest does not need the Vessel--it never had. There is no need for the cause of its destruction to return.

The Vessel does not need Hallownest anymore. The Vessel has so much already, now, away from it. More than it has ever needed, or should have.

And Frisk has shown themselves greater in so very many ways. No threats should be able to touch them. There is no need for concern, particularly from a nearly-empty Vessel.

It watches shadows move across the soil. It listens to rumbles down the street.

There are no breaths to count. It counts crinkled petals instead, over and over again. They are losing their colors.

It combs the shared experience in Dream over and over again, until it realizes what it is doing and throws itself back into counting. This works better than telling itself ‘do not’ by the tiniest margin.

It hears Toriel come into their room, and feels her remove the top of its cell to replace its unnecessary water.

And then she does not leave.

It does not need to know. It should not wonder. It should stay in the darkness. It should not look.

Toriel. Mother, Frisk called her.

The Vessel hears, lowly, “They will be fine.”

It looks.

She is not looking at it. Of course. There would be no reason to.

She is staring at their bed, half-made. She had pulled up some of the blankets, but now her hands are resting at her sides.

“They have had sleepovers before. They have left you before, you pathetic old woman, and they have come back. When will you stop worrying? They are safe,” Toriel says to herself. Her voice is sharp.

Her words are simultaneously relieving and frightening. It…shares this concern, and the knowledge there should be none.

Toriel turns to leave, and she sees its face peering out.

It goes still, unable to stand straight, unable to duck away.

“Oh. Are you worried as well, tiny one?” She sighs, angling her eyes to the window. Her voice, when she continues, is somewhat gentler. “Their trip should only be a day or so. And then they will be back, just as they were before. As always. Asgore will do nothing, and they have so very many friends to keep them safe…”

* * *

Frisk wanted to do what they came for and head off Asgore-related activities as soon as possible.

They said hi to a few monsters, admired how big the village was getting and the flowers decorating everything (most of them, thankfully, aren’t the golden ones) and then told Asgore they were going on a hike. By themselves. They didn’t think he’d object, and don’t give him enough time to anyway before they’re off into the trees.

There’s a trail, which they didn’t expect, for actual hiking. They think. There are some scattered leaves and fresh grass poking up from where the dirt hasn’t been squished down by wheels, so maybe nobody wants to go up it anymore.

Suspicious.

It gets darker the further up they go. They can see fine, but the sun seems less bright, somehow. Thicker clouds than there should be. Wind that reminds them fleetingly of the dreamspace, rustling the flowers and seeming too far away and right there all at once. Except it’s moving the leaves on the trees. So, it's realer. 

Toriel made them stuff a jacket into their backpack, since she worries so much. They consider, for just a second, going back to get it.

But the urge to go, go, go is a lot stronger. This wind’s cold, but it’s better than snow in just a sweater. They’ll be fine.

It takes a while. Longer than they thought it would. And at the end, Frisk finds…a mess. A house, except it looks like somebody got bored and walked away after making most of the framework and part of the walls on the lowest floor.

At the edge of the clearing, a light flickers.

The sight of unexpected ruins fills them with determination.

Huh.

Naturally, they take a selfie in front of it, sending it to Asgore with a bunch of question marks. (Alphys-made phones can get reception anywhere!)

In the time it takes for him to answer, they walk around it a few times, examining. It was built into a jagged cliffside, or it was supposed to be. Bits that look like they were supposed to attach to the rock were splintered off. A peek inside the doorframe shows that some of the floor might’ve been started, but collapsed, sunk under a pool of bad-looking water that leaves their nose wrinkled.

And with the intermittent gusts rolling down the mountainside, the entire thing creaks like it’s going to fall. They might make reckless, stupid decisions sometimes…but they really, really don’t want to get stuck under there _in_ the nasty water.

Especially with their head. This is real bad timing for the pain building behind their eyes, like they haven’t slept at all, or did cry a bunch. They didn’t sleep that much last night, but they did get some, and even dozed off in the truck for a little while. They haven’t cried in weeks.

Doesn’t help that their eyes keep sliding _past_ it. Like there’s something on the cliffside, or behind it, they’re supposed to be seeing but can’t.

That’s probably right with all this bug-magic stuff.

They wish they could’ve brought their Hollow Knight with them--but now’s not the time to think about it.

_**Asgore:  
Howdy, Frisk! You look quite adorable  
I think I will be brushing your hair when you get back, though!  
It looks like you found the Trap House!** _

Frisk eyes the frame with renewed suspicion.

Asgore sends back a picture of himself and a monster they feel like they should know. Red, with horns, and a whole lotta muscles. They’re both grinning widely.

_**Asgore:  
It was going to be a way to carry on monster tradition** _

(Right! They’d met that monster in Mettaton’s hotel place, talking about how much the traps sucked in daily life.)

_**Asgore:  
without endangering human lives!  
But there were many mistakes with the build, and Gerson wanted to take a look at some fossils he found  
The Trap House is planned to be re built elsewhere. Under Mt. Ebott, last anyone told me!  
Please dont go inside there. You might get splinters!!  
Do you want me to come up there and get you?** _

They send back a quick no, and a few minutes later, some thanks.

Asgore sends them more facts. Like that there are places with more magic than others, particularly around this little mountain range, which is maybe related to the war happening around it. (He doesn’t actually write that, but they can guess.) There was a good amount on this one. Gerson, along with his fossils, dug up some crystals that he sold to Flower Town.

Meanwhile, Frisk tries to dig around the foundation. First with their hands, then with a stick, and then with a good flat rock. None of that actually does much. But the frantic tugging is definitely from around there. Forward, down.

They look at their cell phone, absently flicking through their contacts.

And then, inspiration hits at the sight of a _different_ A-name.

_**Alphys:  
???  
frisk???  
is everything OK?** _

Yes, everything’s fine. They just want to ask her a very specific favor. (They should probably text her more instead of just showing up at her and Undyne’s place.)

_**Alphys:  
Oh My God I CANT BELIEVE  
frisk  
ur mom doesn’t like me already  
im not getting on her worse side trying another mech suit =.=  
it still does sound cool tho  
but don’t tell her that plz!!!** _

Frisk rolls their eyes. That’s not what they mean! They express this by adding a whole bunch of exclamation marks.

_**Alphys:  
oh  
sure, i can make a digging robot?  
What are u looking for? something like treasure?** _

It’s just bugs, they guess.

_**Alphys:  
… bugs??? u want   
a robot to catch bugs  
not that thats weird or anything! i just didnt know you were into that  
just your mom  
but  
that’s cool!!! don’t worry about it!!!  
i can do it  
definitely!!!  
so um  
what kind? how many** _

…That’s a good question. They don’t know. They don’t even know what they’re looking for other than somebody (somebuggy?) wearing a mask.

They don’t tell her that last part.

_**Alphys:  
… ok??? i can make containers.  
like little SOUL jars lol  
sorry  
that wasn’t funny** _

It’s fine. Can she do it by tonight? Meet them in Flower Town?

_**Alphys:  
sure  
the gf has to clean up the ceiling ;)  
i can work on the floor and get a nice view  
AND make your thing** _

Lucky her!

_**Alphys:  
i rly am  
things are going good.  
thanks!** _

After a few more sentences of conversation, some of which are awkward, Frisk says bye.

Then they spend a little longer making absolutely sure there’s no secret way into the cliff or under the ground. They do find a couple holes, but they might be made by regular bugs, not magic ones, and digging into those with a stick doesn’t yield anything but some thin roots.

Well, they’ve done what they can, they guess. Leaving it leaves a bad taste in their mouth, but sometimes coming back to a problem later helps. And they _are_ gonna get a cool robot out of it.

They decide to head back down. They can get some donuts, take a tour, stubbornly ignore the tugging getting stronger in their chest telling them to go back, see if there’s anything tiny they can pick up for their Hollow Knight (like a real bed maybe!), have a late lunch…

About halfway back, something flashes in the edge of their vision, and their thoughts skid to a panicked halt.

There’s a golden flower, bobbing its head on the edge of the path, halfway behind a bush.

They stare at it accusingly before creeping forward, and breathe funny when they see it’s not, actually. It’s just yellow flowers. A few dandelions growing close together.

Oh.

They should keep going…but they don’t.

Teeth clenched, heart still thundering in their chest, Frisk pulls up every one.

Their head hurts even _worse_ now. 

Stupid flowers.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Frisk has a very rough time, and readers _might_ want to review the tags for warnings.

Stupid flowers.

Stupid Flowey.

Stupid _thoughts._

Frisk relives stomping all those golden flowers to nothing in their dream with their Hollow Knight.

They’re back at Flower Town faster than they expected, so angry that most of the way back down is a blur. They just barely remember to stop by a bakery (only because they nearly walk right into the BAKERY sign on the ground out front) and poke around for where the spider section is.

They get a bunch of plain Spider Donuts, which are now called Muffet-Brand Donuts, for the bugs they should have soon and then add one for themselves, covered in sprinkles.

…They wonder why it’s not all dusty, if they’re made of _monster_ spiders. Doesn’t taste like it at all. They’d gotten some of Asgore’s--and then they forcefully throw that thought out the window while shoving the donut into their face.

That gets them pretty ticked again. And then after they leave where the shops are, they realize they forgot to shop for anything little that might be fit for someone bug-sized, like a dollhouse or something that could work as a tiny bed better than a tissue, which makes it worse, and makes the ache in their head worse. It’s going down the back of it now, like the pain is a liquid that shifts when they tilt their head.

They’re going to take a leaf outta Sans’ book and take a nap.

They know where Asgore’s house is. Sorta. They didn’t actually pay attention when they jumped out of the truck.

They don’t care much. It’s not a big place, they’re not going to get lost, and they just need to wave down a monster to ask. It’s one of those bunnies, the one with the little brother. “Are you alright?” she asks them, and they brush it off ‘cause they’re fine. But thanks for asking.

It’s a little ways out, but not too far. He needs to be close so he can visit people, after all. That’s his thing, visiting. They wonder if he’d ever visit a human school. Hopefully, if he visits wherever Toriel might be working if she gets a job and they aren’t homeschooled anymore, he won’t be stupid enough to give _Frisk_ a golden flower.

They get to the house, and…

It’s familiar.

Really, really…way too familiar.

Their heart goes somewhere up into their throat.

It’s squat and bricked in some boring color. It’s like the one from New Home, the only difference being there are actual flowers in the garden.

They step through the door, and it looks just like New Home on the inside, too. Almost. There’s colors, but the sun sets early on this angle of the mountain. It’s all washed out, _almost_ uniform.

They call for Asgore, but he’s not home, or he can’t hear them.

Their stomach does a funny swoop.

It’s just a house.

And the flowers were just flowers.

There’s a picture of a flower on the wall. It’s ripped on the corners where it’d been taken off a different wall and transferred.

Their pulse roars in their ears.

They’re forgetting something.

And that doesn’t matter. Ever since they slept in the bed Toriel gave them that first time, they knew, _knew,_ just like how they knew the toys at the foot of their bed were uninteresting, that this wasn’t their place.

Frisk turns to leave, but somehow, their legs are too heavy to move.

* * *

It is tempting to stay, to burn, the captor-within-captor, until both are broken and ruined as the Vessel.

No. If She waits much longer, something will give. She is exhausted.

She will live, and so when She finds a cocktail of thought, drowning in memories and emotion so strong she can taste it:

She reaches for memories of joy,

and She reaches for memories of grief,

and She reaches for memories of love,

and She reaches for memories of hate,

and She finds roots and blood and soul and endings and beginnings throughout this body and the matching minds and SOULS and magic ringing in forms outside of them.

There is no Void to stop Her now.

* * *

Something’s waiting behind their eyes. Their legs moved on their own, and they forgot they did it.

Their partner left. They’re _dead._ They were a voice that didn’t reflect in the mirror.

 _“Still just you, Frisk,”_ they said.

Still just them.

They stare into the mirror and reach out to touch it, watching it break when their palm comes to rest with a spray of silver and gold.

There were always flowers. They were beautiful and bright, but not golden.

The King gardened and smiled and laughed so much, and he put flowers everywhere. A rainbow that contrasted beautifully against the grey. Maybe that’s why he chose it.

It’s all yellow, now. It looks dull.

A smear of green and white and orange drifts behind the edge of their reflection.

It’s a nice house. It was nice when it was purple and it’s nice when it’s grey, and it was always, always happy, even when it shouldn’t have been, when it was fake and there were no smiles or songs.

Someone’s singing along with the beat of their heart.

It echoes over how two children laughed and ran through these halls, too.

They want to laugh. They want to cry.

A child sneaks into the king’s room.

The journal says, “Nice day today.” It has their name and their playing catch with him and Asriel.

The day before, it says, “Nice day today.” It talks about Toriel making sweets.

Days and days and days, until they see one that says, “Nice day today.” He’d been sick from a pie, but it was better now. The entry ends with a smiley face scribbled on, entirely nonindicitibe of the bodily spasms and agony wrenched from his throat as his mouth and insides burned.

A child sneaks into the king’s kitchen.

It says, “Nice day today.” The ink is still wet, and that’s all there is.

There’s no names.

There’s never been a name. They walked and walked and walked, and there wasn’t.

“Why didn’t you say it!” a child wants to cry. They aren’t a baby, so they don’t.

“Why didn’t you ask me!” a child wants to scream. They aren’t going to fight, so they don’t.

“Why did you leave me!” a god wants to howl. She tries and She tries and the words are absorbed by the darkness.

_(NO. LET GO. NOT THIS. NOT. ME.)_

Something

somewhere

splits open.

Heat leaks out, damp against fingers digging in. It’s supposed to be colder on the outside.

They smell flowers. They wonder where they’re from. They call for Asgore, and he’s not there. It’s not a surprise, really. Kings are terrible at what they do. The look in his eyes, how his breathing goes funny--it’s disgusting, it’s unbearable. Could be, he didn’t see Frisk at all. Just Asriel’s best friend, or just a body, or just two bodies, or just seven-or-maybe-eight.

Lights shine around him, a rainbow, a prism, all condensed to white. The knife that isn’t theirs is burning hot in their hand, clutched tight so they won’t drop it.

Where’s Mom? Toriel left. She left. They left. Everyone leaves, or they do. Faithless, foolish, broken, lying. Always something else to look at. Please do not come back.

You cannot give up just yet.

You cannot give up.

You cannot.

The wrong name rings through their head, again and again, even though it’s important.. The flowers scatter on the floor.

I’d never doubt you, says someone important. Never, never, never.

Never doubt the one who loves you. Why did you go? Where did you go?

There is a slam, reverberating through the world. It’s warm, everything is, and sharp teeth flash.

A child wants to cry. No, one _is_ crying. Where? How? Who began this? Look at what you’ve done.

Once upon a time, someone told a story that ended with a lie. It went like this: a bright beacon of hope came from the sky—

* * *

And the Radiance claws her way away from one mind and reaches for another, the one that screams of grief and lost joys,

something that could be considered perfectly cultivated for Her.

* * *

—and it finished with a murmur:

_**You’re going to be free.** _

Their mouth is filled with blood and bitter buttercups and sweet rot. They look at it spread out on the floor, and think that’s where it’s from, but it’s not.

They look down, and there’s a hole in their chest, draining swirling colors. The red nearly matches their shirt, but the orange stands out, vivid against red and the little pattern of skulls.

Something lifts them up. They lash with their dagger, and they hit nothing, since it’s gone. It’s on the floor of the bedroom, where it belongs with flowers and a heart and a life, two lives, too many lives.

There are a lot of lights. Droplets hit their face.

They go to sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

_Bury…Bury my sisters…_

Crushing stone. Searching. Somewhere.

Wait. Dig.

_The Light…_

On her back. Pinned.

_My…bright…_

Dig. Keep digging. They’re singing.

_Pale…slight…_

Crystal cracks. Riches. Light. Gather. Drop. Dig.

Rocks break. Brush. Drop. Dig.

_Bury…_

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

_For the Light…_

_For a…distant…dawn…_

_…Mother…_

_Bury the priest…_

_Bury the…_

_Bury…_

_…_

_Bury…_

Quiet. Fragment. A sliver.

Of.

_(…me…?)_

Something.

♥

Dig. The crystals chime. Singing soft. For her. Of Her.

Dig. Sideways. It’s so bright.

_Wait here…I’ll…_

Water. Water?

On face. Around legs. Water?

Why?

_Wait for the Light to burn…to burn…_

Keep digging. Keep on…digging, keep on…

…keep…

♥

Dig. Up.

It’s getting dark. _DANGEROUS._ Quiet. Dangerous…

_…Bury the Knight with…_

It’s quiet. There’s only water. Air. A tunnel. A river.

A giant crystal. Jutting up, cracked. Hide. Don’t let the Dark see. Hide from it.

Hide _in_ it.

It’s quiet. It’s quiet. Curl up tight. Listen.

It’s quiet.

Quiet. Quiet. Sing. Can’t hear it. Where? Why?

♥

Water. So much, too much, slamming down, backwards. It hurts. It hurts.

Progress is lost. Crystals loosen and sweep away.

The pick-claw swings and digs in on instinct.

Drowning in water. Drowning in Light.

It’s forever.

The water slows.

Drops.

♥

_Bury…Bury…_

_“B-b-bury…my…bury m-me, too…”_

Thin and hoarse. Awful, like scraping stone. Try again.

 _“Bury the…bury the Lady…with her_ …with…n-n-no…”

No. That’s…not right.

_“Bury the Lady w--Bury the Lady, lovely and pale… Bury the Knight with her shining Nail!”_

Yes. That’s better. Feels better! She feels better! Singing always feels better.

Why did she stop singing?

♥

Dig. No, move. Walk. Bits of crystal stick to her back, her arms. Not her legs. The water washes those away.

She digs her claws into the edge of her helmet.

Tired. She’s tired. Feeling better’s washed away too with time. All this wading is leaving her legs aching. She sings anyway, though the reverberation is a different ache.

She doesn’t need to sleep.

_“Ohh, bury my mother, pale and slight, bury my father with his eyes shut tight!”_

There are other miners in the water. Face down, on their sides, unmoving even with their heads in the air. She doesn’t want to look at them.

“ _Bury--bury my--bury my sisters, two by two! And then…and…when you’re done, let’s bury me…too…”_

Her pick-claw shakes. She feels the lumafly batting against the glass of her lamp, a vibration in her head.

♥

“Ah—hello there?”

Myla starts. She stopped walking, stopped singing. The shape of a bug’s coming from the way she was going.

He’s taller than her, with a Nail fastened to his hip. There’s a flash of something in her head, and it’s gone before she can grasp it. He seems to have a helmet, white with dots, and it doesn’t have any place for a lumafly to light his way.

“H-hello!” she says, after a hefty pause.

Every miner knows about bad air. There aren’t too many pockets of it higher in Crystal Peak, but _not many_ isn’t _none at all_. Mining is dangerous business. Bad air can do a lot to a bug, and she’s…pretty sure she’s got a lot of bad air to her, even though she’s feeling better now.

He doesn’t look real. There’s smears of—color, on his nail, but no dust or dirt is clinging to his helmet, mask, or shell. Even the stream barely seems to touch what’s running around his legs. That’s not really possible.

The product of bad air, maybe, tilts his head down. “A familiar voice! So it was your song I heard, guiding me here.”

Oh! She perks up. “Yes! That was me. Ha ha, there’s not much else to d-do right now but sing and keep walking!” Hallucination or not, he’s nicer than wandering alone.

“I see. I was just about to descend from the peak when the ground dropped from beneath me. If you’re coming this way, perhaps I should be turning around?”

The water nearly pushes her backwards. “…I d-d-don’t think you should go that way,” Myla says slowly. She doesn’t…know what’s back there anymore, but her stomach churns at the thought of it.

“Hmm. I _did_ just come through a long drop. You look to be a miner—I’d do better to follow your advice than mine. Though, forgive my saying, you look a bit poorly.”

Oh. She’s listing to the side. Her arm hooks on a nearby crystal so she doesn’t slip.

“I’m…t-t-tired,” she readily admits. “But I’m not…I d-d-don’t want to s-sleep. That’s…d-dangerous.”

He nods, looking past her head. There’s not anything there when she looks back, so she just starts moving forwards, and tells him “I wouldn’t mind if you c-came with me, though my d-d-destination isn’t…close. T-town. You shouldn’t stay alone in…in c-cave-ins.”

“Certainly! And I’ll get to hear more of your singing.“ She laughs softly. He does too. “So, to Dirtmouth?”

“D…Dirtmouth?” she echoes. “N-no, that’s…on the surface.”

“I’m afraid that’s the only town I can think of. At least, any I’ve seen that’s in any sort of repair,” the stranger says. “If I may?” he also says, reaching for her back. There’s a musical _tink-tink-ting!_ on the ground behind her, with the crystals stuck there already tumbling downstream. Well, that confirms it—he’s real.

…She doesn’t remember the town’s name. A protest drops from her mouth to her stomach.

“It d-doesn’t matter,” she says finally. “We should just…get out.”

“Of course,” he says, and the both of them turn back the way he came.

♥

His name, she comes to learn, is Quirrel, and he apologizes for not asking for hers at first. He hasn’t stopped to speak to many bugs in his travels through Hallownest.

Well, one, but they didn’t speak back.

Another… _something_ shivers through her. It slips away just like before.

They talk, they walk. He updates her about the Kingdom beyond. Most of it doesn’t sound right, but he doesn’t seem like a liar.

“I d-d-don’t think I know what I should,” she tells him after a particularly lengthy stretch of quiet.

Quirrel laughs softly. “And I know more than I should,” he says, but moves the conversation along.

Infection, empty spaces, all sorts of things she tries not to think about for now. Riches--she’d been looking for that, but now there’s no point, is there?

She teaches him songs, he reminds her of songs, they make silly and morbid songs together, and they keep going.

Until they both notice something, when their tunnel goes up, nearly too much to climb:

This water’s not moving right.

It seems to be falling straight down, in a waterfall, but it’s…

“It’s moving slow,” Myla’s the first to realize. She points. “On the t-top there, see?”

“Hmm. That is unusual.” He leans back—already dangerous with how steep it is, she lunges for him, and they both nearly fall. “There’s a light up there. Sunlight, I believe.”

“Sunlight?” That’s something she knows she should remember, but a lancing pain through her head doesn’t let her go after it. She’s the one that nearly falls this time, Quirrel clinging to her shell and a jutting stone until she lowers herself, carefully, to safety. A rope would be excellent, but even the bodies they passed (he examined them, not Myla) didn’t have anything but the most basic equipment.

Instead of giving in, she suggests climbing up anyway. “After we rest a b-bit,” she adds. She seems fine, but he…well, he also seems fine, but they’ve been walking a while.

Rest doesn’t mean sleep.

They settle down on opposite sides of the strange stream. It’s just loud enough that she doesn’t feel like hurting her throat, singing to drown it out.

Far, far, far above, the light glimmers uncomfortably. It almost seems the distance between the bottom of the lowest mining shaft and Hallownest’s Crown, but that shouldn’t be possible. Nothing could make the entire mountain collapse into a single tunnel like that.

“Now, what is that sound?” Quirrel jerks her from her thoughts.

She listens hard, and, yes, there’s a noise. Familiar! Almost! But that doesn’t make any sense.

“It’s a…mining machine?” Myla hasn’t heard one of those move in…in a long time. They’d been in disrepair, and the shipments for parts weren’t coming in anymore, the higher-ups complained, and…

And they’re usually…not _this_ loud, unless you _were right next to one—!_

The world roars.

A massive crack crawls down the stone of the tunnel wall.

She grabs for Quirrel, and he for her. One of his hands clings to that weird helmet instead of both, and a spike of fury so strong it’s foreign rises in her stomach— _you try your best to stay together during a cave-in—_

Wind rushes instead of being crushed by falling earth. He's ripped from her grasp, and she’s falling--sideways--into a tunnel of glass.

The last thing she hears is her lamp shattering against something on impact, and Myla blacks out.

* * *

Asgore listens to the doctors and surgeons go about their work. They don’t realize he can hear them with ears sharper than any human.

He let Alphys leave at her own suggestion, and Undyne as well. He doesn’t want them to see how shaken he is, or to be around if Frisk…doesn’t make it.

The humans are focused. He doesn’t understand most of the medical jargon used, but he does know the word ‘extraction’ and that ‘nervous system’ is something dangerous. He can hear the bewildered undercurrent to their words, unless he’s throwing his own thoughts onto them. How had Frisk gotten so terrible so quickly? Why hadn’t he followed them to be certain they would be fine? Why hadn’t he been waiting for them at home, so he could have caught it in time? _What was wrong?_

Asgore’s been staring at a mural of blue and orange flowers on the wall across from his chair. They’re smiling, but seem terribly sickly under the pale lights. How can humans recover in such a bleak place?

There’s a clock on the wall, though it’s digital and so mercifully doesn’t tick. The numbers barely move whenever he looks at it.

He stands, goes and gets coffee. He doesn’t like coffee. The sugar comes in little packets. He numbly uses so many the cup is more sludge than drink, and forgets he’s even holding it until he’s sat down and it’s already cold.

Someone comes out, comes to him. Two people.

A nurse tells him that Frisk is alive, but needs to stay where they are.

A doctor says, with soft reluctance, if she can ask about monster magic.

He tries. It’s difficult. He’s normally much better at teaching, but his eyes are burning with tears, and his words fail him.

Undyne returns. The numbers on the clock have changed quite significantly, he notices. Had he fallen asleep to lose so much time?

Though in a leather jacket with glittery pins, and despite the Royal Guard being long gone, she puts on the air of Captain Undyne. She does much better at explaining magic than he had, albiet in an intimidating way.

There’s no magic like _fungus_. Bullets don’t linger. Weapons only linger if a monster wants it to. Orange magic means you have to move through it, and you definitely can’t _hold_ it.

The doctor seems unsatisfied, and explains: whatever they’d had to remove from Frisk had seemed like cysts, but were identified as…fungus, which is complicated to treat. Fortunately, unlike the usual kind, most of it had been tangled around a few parts of their upper spine and top ribs instead of being fully growing through their organs. Whatever it is seems to have spontaneously appeared, or at least grew too rapidly for their body even attempt to handle, space-wise. As spontaneous generation is long since disproved and they have no records of something quite like this…it might be magic.

Unfortunately, it rotted away almost nothing as soon as it was placed away from their body, so further study is difficult.

This also doesn’t explain the wound in their chest. The wound Asgore believed was from an attack was, to more practiced eyes, obviously from the inside. As though something with their chest had burst.

Monitoring will continue.

“You alright, big guy?” Undyne asks him.

Asgore shoos her away, to go and support Alphys, wherever she is.

♥

By the time he notices sunlight streaming in through a distant hallway window, the worst seems to have passed. That’s something.

He’s told he can look at them, and he does. There’s a wall of glass, and they look absolutely tiny in a gown and all sorts of technology he doesn’t know enough about hooked up. It makes his eyes burn all the worse.

He could shatter the window, pick them up with one arm again

run, be gone before any of these people could even think about catching him.

He could shatter the window and

_(A lost thing, thing that smothers, steals and takes and takes)_

stab through them while their SOUL has no way to dodge, taking their body and wrapping it up to preserve it. He knows, through nauseating trial and error, what works and what leaves their too-solid bodies to fall apart.

But he won’t do either of these things.

He knows he won’t, no matter the distressed buzz that scrapes through his body.

It was terrible, terrifying. After the very first SOUL, awful thoughts rose that left his paws shaking around anyone, as though he would lose control of himself and shred anyone that dared visit to dust. He cowered away more than he did waiting for the seventh, but he couldn’t leave his people to fend without even a King.

Now, can ignore them. Mostly. Clenches his fists, his jaw, and focuses on what he _can_ do.

_(Child. Little child, just like your stolen one. Little child, pretending they’re yours. An usurper to Prince, to your little lost hope, to throne and kingdom, their skin would tear so easily beneath your claws—)_

Asgore turns away, scrubbing his eyes. That is a new one.

He needs…a moment. Several.

Outside usually helps. And he cannot put off something much longer.

He finds a series of texts from Alphys, hard to see with the glare from the sun. He leans against the building in its shadow, startling a nurse that walks out. Ah. Staff Only. He’ll move in a few moments.

_**Alphys:** _   
_**i didn’t find anything useful v_v  
but i did find something frisk might like!  
they were asking for a present  
a couple of them!  
i'll leave it in your house  
i cleaned up the mirror btw. ** _

Asgore rubs a dry gash on his arm made from its shards. He hadn't thought about that at all.

He sends back a hearty ‘thanks’ and is guilty how grateful he is that they aren’t face-to-face. He thinks she knows how to look through his fake smiles.

He calls Toriel.

 _“Dreemurr,”_ she answers instead of a hello, as always, and he feels his tongue go numb in his mouth.

He says--something. He’s got plenty of skill in making things softer, reassuring, hopeful. Yes, Frisk is going to stay a little longer. No, she doesn’t need to come, they’ll be fine.

He wants to tear his own throat out for lying by omission.

It will be fine.

He hangs up.

He stares at the phone dwarfed in his claws. Against his own hopes, she doesn’t call back.

Asgore goes back inside, and takes up his vigil again.


End file.
